Comments on: Seeing Error “Operation Not Permitted” in macOS Catalina or Mojave?

By: Hb3

Hb3 — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 17:48:30 +0000

Very helpful thanks!

By: Yann

Yann — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:39:02 +0000

In reply to brennen. I got the exact same sequence here.

By: Wolfenhawke

Wolfenhawke — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 21:20:44 +0000

Thank you. Providing Disk Utility disk access was the trick to creating password protected folders on an attached drive. Kept getting “Operation not permitted” error.

By: brennen

brennen — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 17:08:15 +0000

Terminal was already granted full disk access but I still got the same error. After disable SIP i got a read only error. Then after giving bin/bash full disk access nothing changed.

By: Derek Chow

Derek Chow — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 02:12:31 +0000

perfectly solved, thank you

By: Laurent Daudelin

Laurent Daudelin — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:49:52 +0000

Doesn’t work for me. Terminal already has full disk access. I disabled SIP, still operation not permitted on a damn “in_progress” directory on my Time Machine backup disk. I’m afraid I will have to reinitialize the disk and lose all my previous backups 🙁

By: tony

tony — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 11:17:27 +0000

Thanks!
Adding Full Disk Access fixed it!

By: Mick

Mick — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 10:46:52 +0000

In reply to Sophia. Awesome thank you :-)

By: Jürgen

Jürgen — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 21:38:16 +0000

Hi Dan,
using mojave – I added both terminal and bash to the full disk access, terminal will still give the same error message. restarted mac, double checked the access – still no effect. Are there any other options? sip, I am hesitant about that…

By: Elizabeth Jones

Elizabeth Jones — Mon, 04 May 2020 18:10:52 +0000

In reply to Dusko Skoko.

HI Dusko,

Yes, Apple built in more protection measures into macOS with Mojave and Catalina.

Let’s try this and see if it works:

Open a new Finder window and choose the Go > Go to folder

Type in this /private/var/vm/sleepimage

Right-click and choose Move to trash

Choose Delete (as it notes, this action is not recoverable!)

See if it allows you, if not you will need to use Terminal to remove it and first allow it full disk access as this article outlines

Liz

By: Dusko Skoko

Dusko Skoko — Mon, 04 May 2020 10:30:12 +0000

Hi Dan,
I haven’t tried yet giving the Terminal Full Disk Access BUT I disable SIP. When I tried to remove sleep image I’m still getting “Operation not permitted”. Usually I don’t mess around with Terminal very often but for some reason I like to remove Sleep image and I never had problems before, just since I upgrade to Catalina. Any solution?

Thanks

By: Elizabeth Jones

Elizabeth Jones — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 17:40:25 +0000

In reply to Sophia.

Hi Sophia,

What were you trying to do when you got the error “operation not permitted?” Make sure you grant whatever app you were using when you got this error Full Disk Access–the example shows Terminal, where this error frequently occurs, but if you were using a different app when you saw this error–that’s the app you need to grant access to.

Also, close the app in question (the one that needs full disk access) before you grant these permissions it in your settings.

By: Sophia

Sophia — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 22:02:55 +0000

Okay – – – – – the problem (on my computer at least) since I upgraded to Catalina was not EITHER of the two problems that you mentioned.

The problem is that when I edit some files with BBEdit, it sets these things called “Extended Attributes” on files – – – – – and for some reason Catalina (either in response to _specific_ attributes or in response to the _presence_ of attributes) does not permit the operation of the command.

I had to use the ‘xattr” utility to clear the extended attributes from the file. Once this was done, the problem was solved.

By: Sophia

Sophia — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 21:34:41 +0000

I haven’t tried the second workaround (and am hesitant to do so) – – – but I tried the first workaround and it had NO EFFECT AT ALL. After the terminal app quit and was restarted the SAME ERROR MESSAGE PERSISTED without any change. This problem only occurred when I made the mistake of upgrading to Catalina. Wish I hadn’t done that.

By: Elizabeth Jones

Elizabeth Jones — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 17:45:11 +0000

In reply to Fernando. Hi Fernando, You can grant Full Fisk Access to only certain apps, but you cannot specify which directories are accessible to those apps.

By: Fernando

Fernando — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 09:53:18 +0000

Is it possible to grant full access to only a few specific directories?

By: Micah

Micah — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 21:25:39 +0000

In reply to Cathy.

Same boat… I tried dragging /bin/bash to Full Disk Access, but no good. Apple Support is not helpful… They wanted me to copy and move stuff with Finder versus Terminal (or XQuartz). The tech didn’t understand that this problem is pervasive outside of simple commands like cp or mv.

By: Charlie Kilpatrick

Charlie Kilpatrick — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 16:21:54 +0000

In reply to Andy. I had this same problem. Try hittng Shift-Command-G and go to /bin. Then from the Finder drag your "bash" executable into the allowed apps window for Full Disk Access (you can't otherwise add bash via the "+" button in your preferences window). Restart XQuartz and you should be able to use XQuartz normally again. Discovered this solution on Stack Overflow

By: Cathy

Cathy — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 21:27:16 +0000

Still not working for me on Catalina after granting full disk access to Terminal.

By: Elizabeth Jones

Elizabeth Jones — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 16:42:02 +0000

In reply to jeff. Hi Jeff, What macOS version does your system use?