Apple has announced that it will tighten Full Disk Access on macOS, and it named AI agents as the reason.
What Apple said
Full Disk Access was designed so that backup software could work. Apple says AI agents have increased the risks of that level of access, and that some developers are using it in ways that expose files, mail, messages and even browsing history without users fully understanding what they granted.
The company says it will introduce additional controls so that users who genuinely want to grant an app this access can only do so with very explicit user action.
What we do not know
Apple has not said what the new controls look like, which version of macOS will include them, or when they will ship. For now this is a statement of intent.
What prompted it
The announcement came days after a journalist claimed that Meta's Muse app for Mac had read their private messages, a claim Meta disputes, and after a Wired report on a flaw in ChatGPT's Mac app that could have exposed sensitive data. Apple did not attribute its decision to either case directly, but the timing is hard to miss.
Why this matters
This is the first time an operating-system vendor has changed a core permission specifically because of AI agents. Desktop agents are useful precisely because they can see and act on everything on your machine. That is also exactly what makes them dangerous, and the permission model was never designed with an autonomous system on the other side of it.
What to do now
Open System Settings, go to Privacy and Security, then Full Disk Access, and look at what is on the list. Remove anything you do not actively need, especially AI assistants you installed once and stopped using. An agent with that permission can read far more than the task you gave it.