How to disable analytics and diagnostics sharing on Mac

Every time an app crashes on your Mac, macOS can quietly log what happened and send a report to Apple — and optionally to the app's developer. It also collects usage patterns and, if you use Siri, audio samples. Here's what actually gets shared, and how to turn each piece off.

What data macOS shares by default

When you set up a new Mac, Apple opts you in to several diagnostics streams at once. The main ones:

• Mac Analytics — aggregated usage data about how you use macOS features, apps, and hardware. Apple says this is anonymized, but it includes app launch patterns, error rates, and hardware usage statistics.
• Crash reports — when an app crashes, a report is generated containing the call stack, app version, macOS version, and system state at the time. Apple uses these to prioritize bug fixes.
• App developer diagnostics — if you opt in, crash reports for third-party apps are also shared with the developer of that app via the App Store crash reporting system.
• Siri & Dictation improvements — a random sample of Siri requests (with personally identifying information removed, according to Apple) is reviewed by human graders to improve transcription accuracy.

None of this is obviously harmful, but it is data leaving your machine that you didn't consciously choose to send. Opting out is reasonable.

How to disable analytics in System Settings

1. Open System Settings (Apple menu → System Settings).
2. Click Privacy & Security in the sidebar.
3. Scroll down and click Analytics & Improvements.
4. Uncheck Share Mac Analytics.
5. Uncheck Share with App Developers.
6. Uncheck Share iCloud Analytics if it appears.
7. Uncheck Improve Siri & Dictation and Improve Assistive Voice Features if you use those.

Each checkbox is independent. Unchecking "Share Mac Analytics" doesn't automatically uncheck the Siri one — go through the list and clear each one you want to opt out of.

The Terminal command for crash report auto-submission

The System Settings checkboxes cover most of what gets sent. For the crash reporter daemon specifically, you can also set the auto-submit flag directly. This requires sudo:

# disable automatic crash report submission
sudo defaults write /Library/Application\ Support/CrashReporter/DiagnosticMessagesHistory.plist AutoSubmit 0

To re-enable auto-submission:

# undo — re-enable crash report auto-submission
sudo defaults write /Library/Application\ Support/CrashReporter/DiagnosticMessagesHistory.plist AutoSubmit 1

Note: this path lives in /Library (the system library, not your user library), so sudo is required. On a standard macOS install this works without touching SIP. If you have SIP fully disabled, be careful not to write to protected system locations.

What you lose by opting out

Practically, nothing breaks. Your apps keep working. Crashes still get logged locally in the Console app — you can review them any time at Applications → Utilities → Console → Crash Reports. The difference is that those reports stop being uploaded to Apple automatically.

The tradeoff is that Apple and app developers get fewer signals about which bugs to fix first. If you hit a reproducible crash in a first-party app, you can still file a Feedback report manually at feedbackassistant.apple.com — that's often more useful than an automatic report anyway, since you can describe what you were doing.

How to verify analytics is off

Go back to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements. All the checkboxes you unchecked should remain unchecked after closing and reopening System Settings. If any toggled back on after a macOS update, check again — Apple has occasionally reset these preferences during major OS upgrades.