Full Disk Access and Disk Drill on macOS Mojave

⚠️ This article has been updated for macOS 10.15 Catalina. Click here for its updated version.

Note: If you are stuck in getting this FDA request over and over again, even after adding Disk Drill to FDA list, just close it and reboot your Mac. As far as we know, it’s a macOS bug related to app notarization. We are working with Apple on resolving it.

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:

1. Go to your Mac’s System Preferences (i.e. through the Apple menu)
2. Go to Security & Privacy – Privacy tab
3. Choose Full Disk Access in the scrollable list on your left
4. 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.