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Is it possible to completely remove apps from the various privacy categories in System Preferences?

System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy

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  • Do you mean specifically for calendars?
    – Cody Rutscher
    Oct 12, 2018 at 14:46
  • Calendars, Contacts, Photos... Generally speaking, how do we remove them entirely?
    – user305944
    Oct 12, 2018 at 18:58
  • 1
    Unchecking them should do the trick no?
    – Cody Rutscher
    Oct 13, 2018 at 5:32

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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To remove all apps from a particular Privacy category, open Terminal.app and type the following command, then type the Return key:

tccutil reset CATEGORY

where CATEGORY is one of:

  • Accessibility
  • AddressBook
  • AppleEvents (i.e. Automation)
  • Calendar
  • Camera
  • Microphone
  • Photos
  • Reminders
  • ScreenCapture (for the Screen Recording list)
  • SystemPolicyAllFiles (for the Full Disk Access list)
  • SystemPolicyDesktopFolder
  • SystemPolicyDeveloperFiles
  • SystemPolicyDocumentsFolder
  • SystemPolicyDownloadsFolder
  • SystemPolicyNetworkVolumes
  • SystemPolicyRemovableVolumes
  • SystemPolicySysAdminFiles

If you want to remove only a particular app, you need to first determine its Bundle ID. Once you know that, issue the command:

tccutil reset CATEGORY BUNDLEID

Note: Specifying an app's Bundle ID appears to require macOS Mojave (10.14) or later.

You could also remove all apps from all categories:

tccutil reset All

Though this might freeze your Mac on macOS 10.15 and later, see comment below.

In the example given in the question, the following commands would remove Terminal and Chrome from Calendars.

First, determine their Bundle IDs:

osascript -e 'id of app "Terminal"'

shows com.apple.Terminal. Same for "Chrome" gives: com.google.Chrome. Now we can reset them:

tccutil reset Calendars com.apple.Terminal
tccutil reset Calendars com.google.Chrome

Pro tip:

This is a one-liner doing the same:

tccutil reset Calendars `osascript -e 'id of app "Chrome"'`

More info in this blog article: Managing Mojave’s privacy protection: Privacy controls.

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    On Catalina, tccutil reset All resulted in terminal not accepting input, my keyboard not working anymore and my mouse unable to click. I had to hard-reboot with the power key.
    – mrm
    Dec 30, 2019 at 21:09
  • The category is missing ScreenCapture for screen recording.
    – Ronnie Liew
    May 27, 2020 at 13:51
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    @RonnieLiew If you see ways to improve a post, please use the edit functionality to do so.
    – nohillside ♦
    May 27, 2020 at 13:55
  • Is there a way to find out bundle identifier of a deleted app (other than reinstalling it)?
    – zyy
    Jan 22, 2021 at 17:31
  • @zyy It might still be found in the Launch Services Database. You can dump that with the cmd /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump
    – Thomas Tempelmann
    Feb 23, 2021 at 9:53
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I tried clicking on the application you want to remove, but not the checkbox and then clicking the remove button (-). It worked for me, but I'm not sure if it will work for others as of yet.

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Unchecking the checkbox prevents the application from using those services.

You cannot remove the listings directly from this window as they have requested these permissions in the past. For non-system apps like Chrome, you can remove the application from your machine and it will remove the listing from the privacy pane.

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