Fixing macOS Sync Tool Permissions Issues

Owned by Jonathan Simon
Last updated: Apr 13, 2021
2 min read

In recent versions of macOS, access to certain areas of a user’s data is restricted by the operating system such that each application must prompt for access per major folder. Areas included in this restriction are:

  • Desktop Folder

  • Downloads Folder

  • Documents Folder

  • Network Volumes

  • Removable Volumes

The operating system will only prompt once for a given application in a given area. If the user declines to provide access, macOS will not prompt again. This will cause issues if the sync tool is instructed to scan or sync content in any of those restricted areas to which the user has declined to grant access. To address this, the user must visit System Preferences in order to manually enable these permissions.

 

  1. From the  menu in the top left of the screen, select System Preferences

  2. Select Security & Privacy

  3. Select the Privacy tab

  4. In the left pane, scroll down to select Files and Folders

  5. In the right pane, scroll down until AutonomicSync.app is onscreen

  6. Click the lock in the lower left corner

  7. Enter the user password for the current account

  8. Check off any of the available permissions that were previously declined

  9. The sync tool must be restarted for these permissions to take effect