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I recently installed a particular application that required me to go to System Preferences > Security and Privacy > General, and then give it permission by clicking the Allow that had shown up for it.

I would now like to revoke that permission. I do not see a list anywhere of apps that I have previously given this permission to. How do I go about doing this? Thanks!

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You can access the list of permissions granted by using terminal.

Type: spctl --list to view all applications.

Finding the app that is causing issues that you want to revoke the permission can be done with: spctl --remove --label "UnwantedApp"

spctl help can give more context options

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  • I tried running spctl --list from my home directory, and got the following security warning: "You are overriding your security preferences to install an app from an unidentified developer. Enter your password to allow this." What's going on? I've never before gotten this message when trying to run a terminal command. [Since I don't yet understand what's going on, I didn't give it my password.]
    – theorist
    Aug 7, 2018 at 5:30
  • The spctl --list command shows a list of apps allowed through Gatekeeper and doesn't change permissions. Have you recently installed a new app, or bypassed any permissions in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy to allow an App to open? I'd recommend trying a filtered command to see any items you've explicitly allowed spctl --list | grep UNLABELED. If you'd like to watch a video about what gatekeeper does check out Apple's video from 21:50
    – adamxweb
    Aug 7, 2018 at 14:09
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    If spctl doesn't change permissions, why is it saying I'm overriding my security preferences and asking for my password? This is precisely what it asks when I try to install an app it from a developer it doesn't recognize. And yes, I recently did a one-time bypass, for just that case, to do a clean install of Logitech Gaming Software. I am somewhat familiar with Gatekeeper (read a few articles about it). I did watch from 21:50 to ~28:00 of the linked vide, and it basically covered what I knew (I stopped after the repackaging problem, since that didn't seem applicable to the issue here).
    – theorist
    Aug 7, 2018 at 14:51
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    I just cannot get any of this working at all. Using mojave. Specifically --list does NOT list any named applications. I mostly just see stuff like 29[GKE] P0 allow lsopen [(gke)] \n cdhash H"e348df59f3b6ec9b5098e63117597f037bb6a914" in there.
    – Jonny
    Sep 10, 2019 at 8:59
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    After High Sierra, there were a few changes to the way security works in MacOS. You can read about the commands by typing man spctl, alternatively an example of how the commands work are: To check whether Mail.app is allowed to run on the local system: spctl -a /Applications/Mail.app To allow Frobozz.app to run on the local system: spctl --add --label "My Stuff" /Applications/Frobozz.app To forbid all code obtained from the Mac App Store from running: spctl --disable --label "Mac App Store"
    – adamxweb
    Jan 15, 2020 at 5:57

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