Change Privacy preferences on Mac
Use the Privacy pane of Security & Privacy preferences to manage the information your Mac makes available to others across the internet or on a network.
To open this pane on your Mac, choose Apple menu 
> System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, then click Privacy.
Option | Description |
|---|---|
Location Services | When you enable Location Services, you allow apps, system services, and websites to use the current location of your Mac to provide information, services, and features appropriate to where you are. To see specific system services that use your location, click the Details button. Location-Based Suggestions allows the location of your Mac to be used by Spotlight Suggestions and Safari Suggestions. |
Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Photos | Shows the apps that have requested access to your contacts, calendars, reminders, or photos. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from accessing this information. Note: In Photos, if you have items that are stored outside the Photos Library, other apps may still have access to them. |
Camera | Shows the apps that have requested access to the camera on your Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from controlling your camera. |
Microphone | Shows apps that have requested access to the microphone on your Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from controlling your microphone. |
Speech Recognition | Shows apps that have requested access to speech recognition on your Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from accessing speech recognition. |
Accessibility | Shows apps that run scripts and system commands to control your Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from controlling your Mac. |
Input Monitoring | Shows apps that have requested to monitor input from your keyboard, mouse, or trackpad, even while using other apps. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from monitoring your input devices. |
Full Disk Access | Shows apps that can access all files on your computer, including data from other apps (for example, Mail, Messages, Safari, and Home), data from Time Machine backups, and certain administrative settings for all users on this Mac. |
Files and Folders | Shows apps that can access files and folders in different locations on this Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from accessing files and folders. |
Screen Recording | Shows apps that have requested access to record the contents of your screen on the Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from recording your screen. |
Automation | Shows apps that can access and control other apps on your Mac. Deselect the app if you want to prevent it from controlling other apps. |
Advertising | You may sometimes receive ads in Apple apps and on your Mac that are targeted to your interests. To limit these ads, select Limit Ad Tracking. You may still receive ads, but they won’t be sent based on data captured by ad tracking. To reset the advertising settings to their initial state, click Reset Advertising Identifier. To view what information about your device is used to deliver ads to you in Apple News, Stocks, and the Mac App Store, click View Ad Information. To review Apple’s Advertising and Privacy policy, click About Advertising and Privacy. |
Analytics & Improvements | To help Apple and other developers serve customers better and improve the quality of their products, you can choose to automatically send analytics information to Apple and app developers.
See Share analytics information from your Mac with Apple and Change Siri preferences on Mac. |
Lock | Locks or unlocks Security & Privacy preferences. Click the lock icon |
to unlock it, then enter an For more information about privacy in macOS, see Guard your privacy.