Learn about the new security and privacy options Apple added with macOS Catalina.
In this lesson for What’s New in macOS Catalina, I look at what’s new with security and privacy with macOS Catalina. Apple increased security by having app ask for permission to access your files and folders the first time you open them. In this video, I show you where you can see which apps have access to your files and folders, and how you can revoke access to an app once you grant it access.
Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):
Now let’s take a look at the new security and privacy options we have with macOS Catalina. Let’s go to My Mac. Now, with macOS Catalina, you’re going to see you have more dialog boxes or more alerts for privacy and security. As an example, let’s go and open up My Applications folder. I’m going to go to ‘Go” here, and then we’re going to go to Applications. Now, I’m going to open up an app that needs access to a folder. I’m going to swipe up here, and I’m going to open up Transmit. Double-click on it. Now, this is the first time that I’ve opened up this app in macOS Catalina.
The first thing I get here is a dialog box asking if I would give Transmit access to my desktop folder? Well, I would, so, I’m going to click on, Okay. This is part of all the new security options we have with macOS Catalina. Where do we manage this? Well, let’s first quit out of Transmit here, and now what I’m going to do is I’m going to go up to the Apple menu, and I’m going to my system preferences. We have our system preferences that open up, let’s go ahead and get rid of this dialog box. Then, what we do is we go over to our security and privacy preference pane. This preference pane is not new, but you’re going to see we have some new options. Let’s go ahead and click on it.
Then, what we do is we go over to Privacy. Over on the left, you’re going to see all of the different options for privacy. Again, some of this is nothing new. We could always control which apps have access to our contacts; it’s basically what we’re doing here, is we’re giving control to different information on our Mac. When I click on Contacts here, I’m going to see all of the apps that have access to my contacts. I don’t have any, so we don’t have any of that shows. If I go over to Calendars, again, I’m going to be able to see all of the apps that have access to my calendars. I use OmniFocus, so OmniFocus asked me if I could have access to my calendars.
In addition to this information, which was available in previous macOS versions, we now have, when I swipe up here, we now have files and folders. I click on it, and these are all of the different apps I have access to my files and folders. They did ask me; you’re going to see we have Transmit here, it asked me for access to my desktop folder. I use Backblaze to back up my computer. It needs access to my entire Mac, so it has full disk access. When I go over to Full Disk Access, what do you think we’re going to see? I swipe up, and you’re going to see Backblaze there. From here, from our privacy settings, what we’re able to do is set which apps have access to various pieces of information.
New in macOS Catalina is we can set which apps have access to different folders. That’s what’s new with macOS Catalina and security and privacy. Apple has taken privacy a step further. We could always see which apps had access to our contacts and calendars as an example, and then, you can revoke access from that information. We can take that a step further and include or see which apps have access to different folders on our Mac. The way that it works is when you first open up an app, and it needs access to a folder as an example; it’ll ask you if it can have access to that folder.
If you grant it access, you can go and revoke access by going up to your system preferences, and then going to security and privacy, and then going to the privacy tab. From there, you’ll see all of the apps that have access to your different folders and other information.
That’s what’s new with security and privacy in macOS Catalina.