How to disable Documents folder protection

catalinafinderpermissionxcode

I'm working on a C++ program in Xcode, which opens some files in the project folder, which is in ~/Documents/Xcode Projects. Because it's in my Documents folder, every time I run the program, it asks for permissions to access my documents folder, and I have to click yes every time. I tried explicitly giving the program permission in the settings, and that works for a little bit, but after about 3 runs of the program it asks for permissions again. Can I just disable the document folder protection? How?

Best Answer

The easy way is to turn off sandboxing for the app, in Xcode project settings under "capabilities". You might not want that though.

Otherwise you probably need a security-scoped bookmark to the directory. When you get access, create a bookmark from the directory URL using bookmarkData(options:includingResourceValuesForKeys:relativeTo:). Make sure to use .withSecurityScope in the options argument. Save that to user defaults. Then when you want to use the directory,

Read the bookmark from user defaults
Initialize the URL using init(resolvingBookmarkData:options:relativeTo:bookmarkDataIsStale:) with options of [.withSecurityScope, .withoutUI].
Call .startAccessingSecurityScopedResource() before trying to use the URL.
Call .stopAccessingSecurityScopedResource() when you're done with the URL.

Related Solutions

Xcode problem with directory permissions

If you navigate to that folder from Finder, you can click Get Info and manage the permissions from the bottom of the window. You can navigate there by using the Go To Folder menu item in Finder or directly navigating their.

MacOS – Can’t save files in some applications

Since you haven't used ls -le as recommended, we don't know what the access control list looks like, but there might be something going on there that is preventing you from being able to write the files. The fact that a newly created user CAN edit the files makes me even more suspicious.

This command will remove ALL access control list entries from the folder and all its subfolders and files:

sudo chmod -RN path/to/folder/containing/files

Once you've cleared the access control list, try resetting the ownership like so:

sudo chown -R ulrikdamn:staff path/to/folder/containing/files

Now grant permissions like so:

sudo chmod -R u+rwX,g+rX,o+rX path/to/folder/containing/files

This gives you full read/write permissions. The "staff" group and all other users get full read permissions. Using an uppercase X, sets the execute bit for all directories within the tree, but leaves the execute bit for regular files as is.

Lowercase x would set the execute bit for all folders AND files. The execute bit must be set for a directory in order to read its contents. If you'd like to give write permissions to the group or others, switch out for g+rwX or o+rwX as necessary in the last command.

Here I'm passing in a folder path. If you want to pass in a single file, just remove the -R from each command. The R makes the command recursive, applying it to an entire directory tree. Without it, the command will modify the permissions for a single file or folder passed in.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Xcode problem with directory permissions

MacOS – Can’t save files in some applications

Related Question