Hello, thank you for your patience with me as I re-learn MacOS, after too long away. I’m wondering if there is a glitch in my Settings “Full Disc Access” view, because it shows the legend “Full Disc Access” in small letters under two apps that actually have FDA toggled OFF according to the Settings “Files & Folders” view. I think my question is: Is what I’m seeing in Settings “Full Disc Access” merely informational, or is it warning me that FDA status is currently permitted to those apps? I’d be glad to share a screenshot of what I’m seeing if that would be helpful. I’m using MacOS 26.3.1(a) on a 2024 MB Pro. Thanks so much for your patience, as I relearn the ropes.
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In “Files & Folders” it will display “Full Disk Access” greyed out when you click the expand carrot “>”.
This indicates full access is disabled for this app.
If full disk access is enabled, instead of “Full Disk Access”, you would see a list of specific folders and a toggle for “on” or “off”.
It’s been a while so I’m not sure if the “Full Disk Access” text is a default status or indicates an app requested FDA some time in the past but the request was denied?
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Thanks, SpivR! I am still unsure of myself on this, and it seems mission-critical to be sure I’m looking at the “final word” in whether an app currently has unlimited access. So I think a screenshot might help. Does this set of screenshots look exactly as expected? I highlighted the parts that look contradictory to my untrained eye. On the left, it looks like I’m being warned that the file finder app and the siriactionsd app have current unlimited access to my system. On the right, it looks like the don’t! –
A.
Giving a “final word” is above my pay grade 
On my system, “Full Disk Access” is greyed out and lighter tone text. I wonder if your text size settings are not showing that on your system?
Here is what I see on my system settings:
Devonthink app: only access to removable volumes
DJI Mimo app: only access to removable volumes
Dropbox app: No full disk access
P.S. I am theorizing that Apple has a bad UI here. “Full Disk Access” greyed out text actually means “No full disk access”?
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I appreciate your pro bono help a lot! It’s the only useful help I’ve received in some hours of puzzling over this today.
I forgot until you pointed it out that I had tweaked the settings on those screenshots to make the greyed-out, lighter-toned text easier to read, because I submitted it to Gemini first, and Gemini has never been able to see greyed-out toggles (it misinterprets them as ‘off’ when they’re ‘on and vice versa’.).
(Gemini was no help: It offered different answers each time I posed the question. )
So, yes, the words “Full Disk Access” under the two apps in the Settings “Full Disk Access” view were greyed out and lightened on my monitor, before I made it contrasty.
It’s great that it sounds like this is what I should be seeing for those disallowed apps, based on how it behaves on your system.
And yeah, I second your motion that this might be a suboptimal way for Apple to convey that an app doesn’t have a very sensitive security privilege – by tagging it with the full name of that privilege.
Thank you so much.
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The “Full Disk Access” without the toggle means the files & folders access for that app is instead managed/overridden by Full Disk Access panel, where you’ve turned them off. It would be better if it said “See Full Disk Access”
So, yeah, bad Apple.
I’m curious why you are only giving DEVONthink access to removable volumes.
Good catch. Not sure how that ended up that way. My database files are in my home folder documents folder and I don’t use any linked files.
(DJI Memo app mainly copies files from SDCARD, so it makes sense there)
We do recommend Full Disk Access for the least annoying experience 
And it’s something DEVONthink has had for years and years before Apple started forcing people to agree to every last, little thing. But, the choice is the individual’s.