App does not appear in File and Folder permissions

macOS has a concept of responsibility, which tracks which user-visible entity is responsible for the current process. This is important because a macOS app can be fragmented into multiple processes, for example, an app and a helper tool, or an app and an XPC Service. Tracking responsibility is way harder than you might think, and it sometimes breaks down.

In your case it seems that something has failed in this responsibility tracking, so the system doesn’t know that the code doing the open is working on behalf of your app. Hence no user approval dialog and no entry in Security & Privacy.

Is the code doing the open running in your app’s process? Or in some other process? And if it’s some other process, how is that process related to your app?

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Hi Eskimo,

Yes, tracking responsiblity seems extermly challenging. I can confirm that our app is a single process and this process attempts to open the file. We do not create any helper processes.

Summary:

Is the code doing the open running in your app’s process? Yes

Or in some other process? No

And if it’s some other process, how is that process related to your app? No other process

Thanks for your help Eskimo! 🙂

I can confirm that our app is a single process and this process attempts to open the file.

Interesting. Thanks for confirming that.

Does your app do anything interesting at startup? I’ve heard unconfirmed reports of issues similar to this caused by the app calling

exec

during the startup sequence. For example, the app’s

CFBundleExecutable

property points to a shell script and the shell script sets up some stuff and then ends with an

exec

of the actual app.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Hi Eskimo,

We do not have CFBundleExecutable property pointing to a shell script. We are a QT based application and during the in the main method we create the QT Client and call we call QTApplications's exec() method. Below is how main method looks like.

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) 
{
//Some setup 
QApplication app(argc, argv);

//Other setup commands
int result = app.exec(); 
return result; 
}

Here is some documenation on the QApplication exec() method:

"Enters the main event loop and waits until exit() is called, then returns the value that was set to exit() (which is 0 if exit() is called via quit()).

It is necessary to call this function to start event handling. The main event loop receives events from the window system and dispatches these to the application widgets. Generally, no user interaction can take place before calling exec()"

Could this be the culprit?

Thanks again Eskimo!

Could this be the culprit?

It’s possible, but I’ve not seen reports like this from other Qt developers.

I’m not a Qt developer myself, but I do have a suggestion here: Create a vanilla Qt app from one of their standard templates and then modify it to access a file no the desktop. If that doesn’t trigger the user approval alert, you know there’s something in play here that affects all Qt apps, and it’s probably time to escalate this to the Qt support channel. If, OTOH, this vanilla app behaves as expected, you know that Qt isn’t the culprit, or not the sole culprit, and you’ll need to dig deeper into your own app.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Thanks Eskimo 🙂 ! I have some additional information and two more questions.

I have recently noticed that this issue only exists on corp images of Catalina 10.15.0 (19A602). When I tested on native Catalina, I always see the user consent prompt and the the application is listed in File and Folder permissions. Not sure exactly why this is the case since corp images shouldn't make changes to this area of the OS (At least that what i am assuming). My first question is, do you suspect that corp images could affect OS's abilitity to detect an app accessing to the protected folders?

My last question is, were there any significant changes in 10.15 (19A603) compared to 10.15 (19A602)? Users that are seeing this issue are running 19A602. I noticed that the release notes did not change.

Thanks again!!!

My first question is, do you suspect that corp images could affect OS's abilitity to detect an app accessing to the protected folders?

I’m not sure what a “corp image” is.

were there any significant changes in 10.15 (19A603) compared to 10.15 (19A602)?

I doubt it but, alas, I’m not in a position to check for sure.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

What I meant by "Corp image" is an enterprise version of OS X. This version is managed by a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.

Ah, then I’ve no idea. It very much depends on what your IT folks have done as part of your enterprise setup. There’s so much scope for customisation, it’s hard to even hazard a guess.

My recommendation is that you work with your IT folks to work through the changes they apply to determine which one is triggering this problem. Once you know that, it may be clear as to whether this problem is a problem with the OS or with your setup. And if it’s not clear, please reply back here with the info and we can take things from there.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

HI all:
I have the same problem, my app is a normal swift project no other process involves,
when it's running at the version after macOS 10.15.4, some users report that no system pop up to allow access to the Documents folder, after authentication by NSOpenPanel,

And now we found this problem always exists in macOS 11.0 (Big Sur), After granting the permission by click NSOpenPanel confirm button, we grant the permission of user home path, but we can only access this folder, if you access its subfolder, it will give an error :
Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=257 "The file “Documents” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it.".
no system pop up alert, so my app not appearing in File and Folder permissions
I don't know if any workaround here? did you found a solution?

I am facing the same issue even with Big Sur (11.5.2) The pop up doesn't come for the access and since there is no permission my app gives error straightaway. Neither am I able to add permissions to my app in Files and Folders section as the + sign is greyed out. Providing fill disk access to my app works but this is not a good solution. Why is MacOS not prompting to ask the user for the permissions? I believe it will not ask if user has already denied the access at the time of first popup or may be user denied manually, but with a fresh install of the app, MacOS should surely ask for the permissions at least once. Am I missing something? Can someone suggest any good workaround? Do Mac developers consider this as a bug at all? Thanks in advance..

Neither am I able to add permissions to my app in Files and Folders section as the + sign is greyed out.

That’s expected. The only way to get in that list is to trigger the TCC alert.

Why is macOS not prompting to ask the user for the permissions?

The most common cause of this is that TCC is unable to determine the responsible code for the access. For more on this, see my On File System Permissions.

Try this:

1. In Xcode, create a new app from the macOS > App template.

2. In Signing & Capabilities, make sure that a Team is set and you’re using Development signing. Ad hoc signing, that is, Sign to Run Locally causes problems for TCC.

3. Also remove the App Sandbox capability.

   IMPORTANT Xcode 13.0b5 has a bug that makes it hard to disable the App Sandbox (r. 71561911). Use Xcode 12.x for this.

4. Add a button and wire it up to code like this:

   @IBAction
   func testAction(_ sender: Any) {
       do {
           let u = URL(fileURLWithPath: "/Users/quinn/Desktop/test.txt")
           let d = try Data(contentsOf: u)
           print(d.count)
       } catch {
           print(error)
       }
   }
   

   Replace quinn with your user name.

5. Create a text file on your desktop called test.txt:

   % cat > Desktop/test.txt
   Hello Cruel World!
   ^D
   

6. Run the app and click the test button.

What do you see?

This should trigger the TCC alert for the Files and Folders > Desktop MAC. If it doesn’t, there’s something weird going on with your system. If it does, this problem is specific to your app, and we can debug things from there.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"