EXPERT ADVICE
Our resident genius solves your Mac and iOS problems
Finding yourself confuddled about privacy protection when you receive requests for access to folders?
What you see in Privacy & Security settings is only half the story. When you access and save files or folders in protected locations like Documents, macOS may attach data to them granting further access regardless of whether that’s been given in the Files & Folders section.
So an app that doesn’t appear to have access in Settings can still do so. Because these two protections operate separately, and you can only see the settings for one of them, what actually happens might seem wrong. If you’re in any doubt as to whether to give consent to an app accessing a protected folder, and its documentation doesn’t explain, just say no.