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Adobe InDesign 2026 macOS Permission Alert: “Wants to Access Data from Other Apps”

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
January 29, 2026
7 replies
3965 views

Hello, how do I get rid of this message? It has been appearing since 21.2.
“Adobe InDesign 2026” wants to access data from other apps.
Thank you for your help and feedback.

Correct answer Abhishek Rao

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to share your observations on this issue.

I wanted to provide a positive update. The recurring macOS permission alert, “Adobe InDesign 2026 wants to access data from other apps", was identified as a bug and has now been fixed by the engineering team. The fix is included in InDesign 21.4.

For anyone who is still encountering the prompt, please update to the latest version of InDesign 21.4 through the Creative Cloud Desktop app and let us know whether the behavior is now resolved on your system.

As previously mentioned, a useful workaround while the issue was being investigated was to grant Full Disk Access to InDesign via System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access. This helped prevent the prompt from appearing repeatedly for many users. The alert itself was triggered by macOS privacy controls and not by a specific InDesign feature, which is why granting Full Disk Access often resolved the symptom.

Thank you again to everyone who reported the issue and shared details that helped the team investigate it. If you continue to see the permission prompt after updating to InDesign 21.4, please let us know your macOS version, InDesign version, and whether Full Disk Access has been granted so we can investigate further.

Thanks,
Abhishek

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Just to add viewpoint to this discussion from a non-developer just-a-user point of view, this message suffers from being alarming without giving more explanation and understanding. It doesn’t tell you why it needs this permission.

Recently, while experimenting with how to disable popups in InDesign, I found out that these annoying popup messages do not come from the InDesign app itself, and hence cannot be turned off within InDesign. ExtendScripting won’t help either, because the annoying popups come from a separate Adobe software running alongside InDesign. Where is that other app? What is that other app called? I dunno.

But maybe that is a major reason why InDesign needs to ask permission to access data from other apps?

Mike Witherell

K

Karen29052777t8ee

Participant

Is there a way to turn the message off, WITHOUT allowing full access?

leo.r

Community Expert

Is there a way to turn the message off, WITHOUT allowing full access?

Do you have any particular reason to decline the access?

You can try, of course. But then InDesign, potentially, won’t be able to function properly in various ways that nobody can predict.

Urs AttingerAuthor

Known Participant

Okay. Thank you all for your help and feedback. Have a successful day.

Urs AttingerAuthor

Known Participant

Yes, it works as described. I'm just wondering how secure it is with full access? I hope Apple or Adobe will change that somehow.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

This is completely Apple, they do it with all Apps - the Apple OS is severely restricted and new apps need to be indvidually granted access to the OS systems.

Maybe something Adobe can do, but my point of view is it’s Apple OS restrictions.

friendshaped

Participant

Why then is it that I only encounter this behavior with the 2026 Adobe apps.

I have Illustrator 2023 and Photoshop 2025 installed in addition to the 2026 versions and neither older version triggers this warning nor is either app is in my Full Disk Access permissions list inside of System Settings.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Urs Attinger,

Thanks for reaching out. Adding to the expert suggestions, this prompt is coming from macOS privacy controls, not from InDesign itself. To stop it from appearing, please go to System Settings > Privacy and Security > Full Disk Access and make sure Adobe InDesign is enabled there.

For reference, you can also take a look at these similar discussions where the same behavior was resolved by granting full disk access: https://community.adobe.com/questions-606/cc-library-asks-for-permission-every-time-i-restart-my-mac-580498 and https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255856376

Please let me know if the message stops appearing after this. Looking forward to update.

Abhishek

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Thanks for sharing your observations. I wanted to provide a quick update on this issue.

The Permission Alert “Wants to Access Data from Other Apps” appearing on every launch has been identified as a bug on macOS 15, and our engineering team is currently working on a fix. I’ll keep you posted here as soon as we have any updates.

In the meantime, as a workaround, please grant Full Disk Access to Adobe InDesign by going to:
System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access

This should help prevent the prompt from appearing repeatedly.

Thanks for your patience, and I’ll share more updates as they become available.

Abhishek

jackthegiantkiller

Yes, I’m on MacOS 15 and am so tired of this alert which I have given access every single time for every single Adobe app in the suite over and over, and only After Effects and Premiere show up in the Full Disk Access section, none of your other apps show up there even after asking all these times, I added Illustrator manually but don’t know if it will stick. Maybe don’t jump to blaming Apple so quickly?

Urs AttingerAuthor

Known Participant

... nothing, it just disappears. And when I restart InDesign, the same message appears again in Bridge. I've already uninstalled both programs and reinstalled them. But that didn't help either.

M

Manan Joshi

Community Expert

What happens if you provide the access? Not sure why it is asking for this permission

-Manan

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Wonder was it a Mac OS update? I’ve seen the Mac ask for permissions for everything, from the eyedropper tool, to access to the desktop - Mac OS drives me crazy.

F

Ferenc_85

Participating Frequently

Asking permission to capture the screen for the eyedropper tool seems like a very good security measure to me. I don’t want any app to capture my screen unless I grant access.

But maybe Windows users are used to it, because of the OS itself that captures and saves the screen every three seconds with Recall 😉

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