The Best Mac Privacy Settings to Change Today

Mac privacy advice usually arrives as either a shrug or a list of thirty things. This is the short version: the settings that meaningfully reduce what leaves your Mac, ordered by how much they matter, with none of the ones that cost you a feature you actually use.

Turn off the two that exist for Apple's benefit

1. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Advertising → turn off Personalised Ads. This governs ad targeting in the App Store, Apple News and Stocks. You still see ads, they are simply not built on your usage.
2. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → turn off Share Mac Analytics and Share With App Developers. This sends usage and crash data automatically. Off is fine; you can still send a crash report deliberately when it helps.

Neither change breaks anything. They are on by default because defaults are where the data comes from.

Fix the lock screen gap

The most likely privacy incident on a Mac is a person walking past it, not a remote attacker. macOS ships with a grace period after the screen saver starts during which no password is needed.

1. Open System Settings → Lock Screen.
2. Set Require password after screen saver begins or display is turned off to Immediately.
3. Set the display to turn off after a few minutes on battery and on power.
4. Set a hot corner to start the screen saver, in Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners, so locking is one flick.

Also worth checking on the same screen: whether the login window shows a list of users, and what notifications appear on the lock screen. A preview of an incoming message on a locked Mac in an open office is a real leak.

Audit what apps can already see

Permissions accumulate. Something you granted screen recording to for one meeting three years ago still has it. Go through these in System Settings → Privacy & Security and remove anything you do not recognise or no longer use:

• Screen Recording — the most sensitive of the list. Anything here can see everything you see.
• Camera and Microphone — should be a short list.
• Full Disk Access — should be shorter still. Backup tools and a few developer utilities, nothing else.
• Accessibility — allows an app to control your Mac. Legitimate for window managers and automation tools, worth questioning otherwise.
• Location Services — turn off per app, and check System Services → Details at the bottom for the ones enabled by default.

Stop search sending what you type

Spotlight can send your search terms to Apple to return web suggestions. If you would rather your local file searches stayed local, open System Settings → Spotlight and turn off Siri Suggestions and search suggestions. Do the same in Safari's settings, where the address bar has its own suggestion option.

Check what is already leaving your Mac

Two built-in tools answer this without installing anything. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Analytics Data shows the actual reports queued to send, so you can see the kind of thing being collected rather than guessing.

For network activity, macOS has a firewall that can block incoming connections per app, in Network → Firewall. It does not restrict outgoing traffic, which is what most people assume it does. If you want to see and control what apps connect out to, that needs a dedicated tool such as Little Snitch or LuLu, and it is a bigger commitment than a checkbox: expect a week of approving connections before it settles down.

The one worth doing before every screen share

Privacy also means what other people see. Before you share a screen, hide the desktop clutter and close the windows you would rather not flash past. Desktop icons can be hidden entirely with one preference:

# hide every icon on the desktop
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

# bring them back
defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop && killall Finder

Your files are untouched, they are simply not drawn. Combined with Option-Command-H to hide every other app, that is a two-second cleanup before any call.