⚠️ This article has been updated for macOS 10.15 Catalina. Click here for its updated version.
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You may have come across Full Disk Access in the latest version of macOS Mojave already in other apps that are working with your data in a certain way: emails, photos, etc. Full Disk Access is a security feature of the Apple’s operating system that lets you control which third-party apps should be allowed to access restricted areas of your user folders. Our friends at MacPaw have a great article on this system option. Since version 3.7, Disk Drill will request this permission for the following 3 features:
- Loading your iTunes backups for iOS data recovery
- Running Clean Up mode on all the contents of your user’s folders
- Finding duplicate files and folders in system folders
Granting Full Disk Access for Disk Drill is intuitive and really simple. It takes just a few clicks:
And here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Go to your Mac’s System Preferences (i.e. through the Apple menu)
- Go to Security & Privacy – Privacy tab
- Choose Full Disk Access in the scrollable list on your left
- Add the Disk Drill app to the list by using the “+” button and locating the app in your Applications folder, or by drag-and-dropping it onto the list
Done, not just go back to Disk Drill, and proceed with your data recovery, clean up or duplicate removal normally.