Full Drive Access

When running from the Mac App Store, or under macOS 10.14 “Mojave” or later, EtreCheck will be limited in certain ways.

In the Mac App Store, these limitations are:

• Ability to directly remove adware;
• Diagnostic information;
• Safari extensions;
• Software update status;
• Full Time Machine information; and
• Some software versions in the Software Installs list.

On macOS 10.14 “Mojave” or later, the limitations are:

• Diagnostic information; and
• Full Time Machine information.

These limitations can be removed by granting EtreCheck Full Drive Access. To enable Full Drive Access, go to the EtreCheck menu at the top of the screen, next to the Apple menu, and choose Preferences. Then go to the Privacy pane. Click the checkbox for Allow full access to the startup drive. This will display the Full Drive Access dialog. Click the Allow button to display a standard file open dialog for the root directory of your hard drive. Click the Choose button to enable Full Drive Access.

On macOS 10.14 “Mojave”, there will be an additional Allow button for Mojave’s new Privacy restrictions. Click the Allow button to open the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences. Click the Privacy tab. Click Full Disk Access in the left hand sidebar. On the right side of the dialog, click the + button and choose the EtreCheck executable in the Applications folder.

This will remove all limitations except for direct removal of adware in the Mac App Store version.

Please note that when running EtreCheck from the Mac App Store on macOS 10.14 “Mojave”, Full Drive Access is a two-step procedure that must be initiated from EtreCheck via EtreCheck‘s Preferences. Although the Full Disk Access feature in System Preferences is also required, it is not enough. There is an additional step required in EtreCheck itself.