Full Disk Access is the most dangerous setting on my Mac

On October 2, Apple told Mac developers it will add new controls to Full Disk Access, so that granting it takes “very explicit user action.” Apple’s reason is AI agents: as they get more capable and autonomous, it wrote, the risks of that much access “will grow substantially.” Apple gave no date, TNW and Macworld both noted.

Apple’s notice says an app with it can expose your files, mail, messages and browsing history, and for a messaging app, the privacy of the people you talk to. MacStories pointed out the reason Apple gives for the setting existing at all: so backup apps can work.

Apple’s notice landed days after Inc. columnist Jason Aten said Muse knew the contents of his messages, TNW reported, and Decrypt reported that by the time he checked, it had synced more than 187,000 rows of his message history. Meta’s answer, per TNW, is that Muse needs two settings to read Messages: Full Disk Access and the Messages connector inside the Muse app. How it got there on his Mac is still disputed.

AI agents ask for it anyway. Security researcher Patrick Wardle wrote on X about “greedy AI agents/assistants insisting on Full Disk Access,” Computerworld reported, and Eclectic Light’s advice is to hold off granting it to agents until Apple has fixed the privacy side.

I’d go look today. It’s System Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Full Disk Access. TidBITS notes an app lands on that list just by trying to open a protected file, so I’d read the switches, not just the names. Backup and security tools usually need it. A chatbot, a note app or something I tried once and forgot about doesn’t, and I’d switch those off. If an app truly needs it, it will ask again, and I can decide then.

Apple is going to make this harder to grant. I’d take back what I already granted.