Permissions explained

macOS does not offer fine-grained permissions for “caches” or “the Trash”. The folders a maintenance tool has to read — user caches, application support, logs, browser profiles, the Trash — all sit behind a single gate called Full Disk Access.

That gate is broad by Apple's design, not by ours. What matters is what the app does with it: iSweepy reads those locations to build a list, shows you that list, and writes nothing until you approve. Nothing is transmitted anywhere.

The app opens and runs. Modules that only need your own visible folders — Downloads, Large & Old Files, Duplicates within your home directory — still work normally.

Modules that read system-managed locations will return few or no results. That is a permission signal, not a clean Mac, and iSweepy says so on screen rather than showing you a misleading empty state.

Reading the raw surface of a volume is a privileged operation. For internal disks macOS will also ask for administrator authorisation on top of Full Disk Access.

External media — USB drives, SD cards, disk images — generally needs only Full Disk Access, which is why recovering from a camera card is usually the smoothest case.

macOS ties Full Disk Access to the app's code signature. If you replace iSweepy with a differently signed build, the old grant can go stale: the toggle still looks enabled, but the system no longer honours it.

The fix is to remove the entry and add it again, which forces macOS to record the new signature.

The Permissions module reads the macOS privacy database and lists which applications hold camera, microphone, screen recording, accessibility and full-disk grants. It is read-only: it reports, and any reset you choose is performed one app and one service at a time, never in bulk.