Cannot add apps to accessibility or full disk access

Tech Support
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Sinds this evening Apps cannot be added to the Full Disk Access or Accessibility lists of the Privacy pane on my 2019 iMac with Monterey. The lists are empty, I can unlock, and search for an app but opening it does nothing. I have reset the PRAM, started up in safe mode (same symptoms), nothing seems to work.

I was thinking of corrupt system pref pane files but don’t know where to find them. Anybody any ideas?

Regards,
Wilko

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Does the same thing happen in another account on the Mac? If you don’t have a second account, create a temporary test account. The results may point to a problem with the operating system versus something in your particular account.

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If I had this problem, I would follow the instructions from here:

which is only about accessibility, but maybe it might help Full Disk Access too?

Quoting directly from the article below:

Here’s how to reset the privacy database:

  1. Open the Terminal app, found in Applications > Utilities.
  2. Copy the following and press Return: sudo tccutil reset Accessibility
  3. When prompted, enter your administrator password to approve the command.
  4. You shouldn’t see any feedback; the command will just complete. Now immediately restart your Mac manually—don’t force restart it—from  > Restart.
  5. When the macOS session is running and accepts your input, return to the Privacy tab and check any boxes needed to enable software that requires it. Some apps will prompt you after restart as they recognize they’re missing permissions.

The tccutil app lets you reset permissions for all sorts of things macOS asks you about, such as which apps can access Contacts, but Accessibility appears to be the most fragile part.

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Thanks TJ, but I already tried that one as well (forgot to mention it initially). The result was: “tccutil: Failed to reset Accessibility“.

I am beginning to suspect it has something to do with access rights got corrupted.

I will try another user as suggested later today, that also might give me clues.

If it is indeed access rights, anybody any idea how to fix that?

Thanks, Wilko

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@margaretamartin: alas, a new user with admin account suffered the same problem.

Also did a recovery install. No go.

I am at a loss here

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Bummer. Reinstalling macOS was going to be my next suggestion if the terminal suggestion from @tjluoma didn’t work. I’ve never seen anything like this with my clients’ Macs.

Perhaps it’s time to contact Apple Support to see if there’s anything else to try before wiping, reinstalling the operating system, and then restoring your data from a backup?

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If you used sudo then I’m not sure what else to suggest, unfortunately. Recovery might not work, but maybe Single User Mode?

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I haven’t had to try these, but there are a couple interesting solutions from other users in this Reddit thread:

The fix was to locate the tccutil database in Finder, put the tccutil.db file in the trash (don’t clear the trash just in case), reboot the machine then once it’s back up try use an app that requests access to the camera and mic again.

Check the perms on ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC. If it’s not owned by the user you need to repair the permissions.[…]we needed to fix fast so I disabled SIP, deleted the com.apple.TCC directory, reenabled SIP, and had user launch an app to make a request for access.

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Thanks, those are good suggestion to investigate. No time anymore today, but will check it out tomorrow.

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Howard Oakley has a rundown on tccutil in Catalina that might be of some help – he mentions that the “reset All” doesn’t seem to reset all lists. Some need to be done individually. And there are lists for users and one for root.

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I also had the same problem. When I turn on my mac, if I open the Settings immediately, applications were coming in the Accessibility section. But I was having the same problem after a few minutes if I turned off the Settings. I noticed that I was having the following problem in the Files and Folders section:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254763668

When I solved it as described in the link, my problems were completely resolved.

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