About two weeks ago, Apple unveiled the stable version of macOS 15 (codenamed Sequoia) at the WWDC 2024. The tech giant has particularly focused on enhancing user privacy with this update.
However, that seems to have backfired. Ever since the update, users have been facing a barrage of unnecessary permission requests, even for simple app functions. In earlier versions of macOS, users just had to grant all the permissions an app needs when they first installed it.
But now, on macOS Sequoia, they have to deal with a few more of these pop-ups, especially those related to local network privacy. Many of these did not require user approval and happened automatically before. And the thing that makes all of this worse is that there are no solid workarounds for this problem.
Users have taken to online forums and social networking sites to complain about this issue. And judging by the volume of reports, there is no doubt that this is a widespread one. One particular user claims that they have been prompted to grant the same file access permission several times.
Another user reports that some of their apps asked for permission to search for devices in their local network, which was never the case earlier. On further inspection, they found out that the apps were also accessing local IP services, and they don’t function at all if the permission is denied.
Another thing that bugs users is that once they deny permission to access an app, the prompt simply refuses to reappear, rendering the app useless if it relies on that permission to function.
The only thing one can try and hope it works in such situations is restarting the app multiple times. Reinstalling the app might work as well. This comes from one user who reported that their local IP camera stopped working after the macOS Sequoia update. The prompt did not show up at first, which blocked the functioning of the app.
Apple has yet to acknowledge this issue, so users are left with no choice other than to try the above-stated ways. Apple may have tried to give more control to users. But in doing so, they have left users more frustrated than happy. We hope they fix this soon and give users proper ways to manage app permissions.
