Apple will add extra controls on macOS Full Disk Access and names AI agents as the reason

Any team shipping a Mac AI agent today asks the user to toggle Full Disk Access once, in System Settings, and reads everything after that. Apple said on 2 October it is changing that, and named AI agents as the reason.

Apple published a short developer news post titled "Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS" and framed the change as a response to how the permission is being used. "Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems, including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history, without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple wrote. The company said it will introduce "additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action."

What Apple is pointing at

The current Full Disk Access permission is one toggle in System Settings that gives a single app read access to protected areas: Mail, Messages, Safari browsing history, Time Machine backups, and any folder the user has not individually unlocked. Apple's post says the permission exists so that backup apps can function, and calls out that it "largely sidesteps" the per-app and per-folder controls macOS otherwise uses.

Apple named AI agents directly. "As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially," the post read. The company said it is "committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access."

What the post does not say

Apple did not give an OS version, a release date, or a developer deadline. The post has no code samples, no new API, and no replacement for Full Disk Access. The wording is "going forward" and the mechanism is left as "additional controls" with "very explicit user action", which press coverage from TechCrunch and The Verge the same day repeated without adding detail. Apple's own blog post referenced in TechCrunch's write-up is the same news post, not a separate technical note.

The thing to plan for is the request flow, not an API migration. An agent app that today prompts once and then reads broadly is the pattern Apple called out, and that pattern will become harder for a user to accept quickly. Fallbacks worth looking at now: a per-folder permission the user grants only when the agent needs it, a narrower API where one exists, and a user-visible log of what the agent read and when, so the explicit grant has something to be explicit about. Backup apps, which Apple singled out as the legitimate case, are not the audience here.

Source

Primary source: Apple Developer News, "Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS". Reporting: Ars Technica, TechCrunch, The Verge.