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- Hacker News
- Am I getting old? "full disk access" used to be something that's supposed to be normal; if you're the owner of the machine.by Kim_Bruning
- Some of the restrictions have already been implemented in macOS 27 by restricting access to (at least some ?) containers even with Full Disk Access on.
One niche issue resulting from this : it broke the ability to access my own screensaver settings and files from it's settings app, because those settings live inside a container for a system extension that belongs to Apple (because Apple still hasn't publicly released it's "modern" screensaver api, it's still old style plugins run by a legacy extension).
Several screensaver developers I know got bitten by this and there's no proper workaround, you just have to use "/Users/Shared" and hope that doesn't go away any time soon.
In my case it silently broke migration for Aerial from 3.X to 4.X in Golden Gate (where I moved away from the legacyScreenSaver extension to the new undocumented wallpaperextension format). I did move to "/Users/Shared" earlier this year but some people will inevitably get caught by this if they didn't update, and there's no recourse, FDA doesn't work, you can't even ask for access, nothing works. And since it's a silent fail, I didn't even notice before this week.
by cwizou - I don’t quite understand why people complains this is bad for AI agents. Local Code (https://releases.drawthings.ai/p/public-beta-of-local-code-b...) doesn’t require full disk access, when you ask the agent to deal with some files it doesn’t have access to, the built-in ‘permit’ tool will trigger the OS folder grant interface and that information will be recorded both by Apple and by the app so it can be revoked later if you want. That allows you to not give full disk access to the app to be useful.by liuliu
- One update away to revoking Full Disk Access in the future. This commercial has come full circle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqZ8AqmLPYby post_break
- I would like the ability to see which specific folders I have granted access to on an app by app basis. And edit. It’s not clear to me how you revoke an app’s individual folder access after you have granted it.by mrkpdl
- I have to have my machine further crippled in order protect people who don't know what they're doing on a computer.
I don't think there's anything wrong with people not knowing how to use a computer properly. In fact, I wouldn't expect a normal person to, why should they? So what I would love to see is normies be given iPads, and my computer left the hell alone.
It's like if we over-simplified all the controls in a cockpit because someone who likes playing flying games finds it too difficult to fly a real plane.
by ghusto - IMHO, it's good to add more specific controls for this. After reading this, I went and checked my list of app with full disk access:
- Ghostty (fine, it's my terminal)
- Alfred (fine, I use it for searching everywhere)
Then I have a few turned off:
- Spotify (why does it need full disk access) ??
- Gemini (nope, don't need it to know everything about my computer)
by moecables - > We give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities
> Full Disk Access largely sidesteps these controls
That's because you don't really. Just like you don't give users "powerfulf" controls, so instead they have to resort to dumb ones like "Full disk"
For example, if you care about "mail, messages, and even browsing history", why isn't there a subset of "full disk access except for reading mail/messages/browsing history"? Or if vibe code have some basic disk sizing functionality to ask questions about your files, why can't it have a more granular "full disk read only access for file sizes only" so that your vibe coded disk visualization app can't destroy your data or your privacy
> can only do so with very explicit user action.
Which is in the same vein and is mostly useless, just another inconvenient bump
by eviks