Permissions

Full Disk Access

macOS hides some folders from every app until you allow it: Mail, Messages, Safari, other apps' data and more. Without Full Disk Access, Strata's scan still runs, but those folders are invisible to it, and the totals come out short by whatever is in them.

Strata only measures what it can see. It does not open or read the contents of your mail or messages; it counts how much space their folders take. Nothing it reads leaves your Mac.

Switch it on

1. Open the setting

   Press Open Settings… on the card Strata shows when it opens, or go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, Full Disk Access yourself.

2. Switch Strata on

   Find Strata in the list and turn its switch on. macOS may ask for your password or Touch ID: this is macOS asking, in its own window, not Strata.

3. Reopen Strata

   macOS applies the change only when an app starts. Use Quit and Reopen in Strata, or quit it and open it again.

Give Strata Full Disk Access has the same steps with what to do if Strata is missing from the list.

Without it

Strata works, and says so when a total is short: an orange unreadable count at the top of the window, a notice with Fix, and a triangle on the Space Map's disk card. Each opens the steps above. Continue Without It closes them. The card at launch comes back each time Strata opens while the access is off, and Strata's Settings show where things stand.

Why macOS guards these folders, and why no app can switch the setting on for you, is in Why apps ask for Full Disk Access.

The administrator password

Strata never asks for it, and never sees it. It installs no privileged helper and runs nothing as root.

A few things on a Mac belong to the system: an app an installer put in Applications, launch daemons, helper tools, and some apps' shared files. Only an administrator can move those. Strata lists them like everything else, tagged Password or grouped under Needs an administrator, and never ticks them for you.

To remove one, use Show in Finder. Strata selects it in a Finder window; press Command Delete there, and Finder asks for your password or Touch ID and moves it to the Trash. If Finder says it will delete something immediately, macOS will not keep that item in the Trash, and you can cancel there.

Control of Finder (before 1.0.14)

Versions before 1.0.14 asked, once, whether Strata could control Finder, so that it could hand administrator-only items to Finder to move. From 1.0.14 it no longer does, and no longer asks. If you allowed it, the switch still sits in System Settings, Privacy & Security, Automation, under Strata, and you can turn it off there. Nothing in Strata uses it now.

Notifications

Since 1.0.19, Strata's notices (that the disk is almost full; if you turn it on, that junk has built up; and, from 1.0.25, that the trial is ending) come as macOS notifications. The first time one is due, macOS asks whether Strata may show notifications. Saying no changes nothing else: the notices just do not appear, though the warning for a disk under 2% free still does, since it is Strata's own, a card from its icon in the menu bar (or at the top right of the screen when Strata is not in the menu bar). Turn them all off in Strata's Settings, under Notices; System Settings > Notifications stops only the notifications.

No other permissions

Strata does not ask for your location, contacts, photos, camera, microphone, screen recording or accessibility. Keeping Apple's apps closed and quitting apps from Optimize use the ordinary requests any app can make, and need no permission.