#546·dust

dust triggering macos privacy protection promp, even when filtering out the /Users folder

Author: aceciliaCreated Dec 18, 2025Updated Mar 3, 2026

Hi

I am trying to use dust to get an understanding of how the disk in my CI is being used.

Context: in macos, accessing some specific folders/files leads to a UI prompt asking the user for permission - this feature is documented here.

Image

When this happens, the read operation is stalled indefinitely until the prompt is answered by the user. This means: dust stalls.

To work around this issue, I tried excluding the /Users folder, so dust does not even try to access any privacy-sensible folder:

bash
sudo dust \
    --min-size 5G \
    --number-of-lines 999999999 \
    --reverse \
    --bars-on-right \
    --no-progress \
    --no-colors \
    --ignore-directory "/Users" \
    / 

But this did not help: even when using --ignore-directory "/Users", the prompt continues appearing.

How to reproduce:

bash
tccutil reset SystemPolicyDesktopFolder

sudo dust \
    --min-size 5G \
    --number-of-lines 999999999 \
    --reverse \
    --bars-on-right \
    --no-progress \
    --no-colors \
    --ignore-directory "/Users" \
    /

# The privacy permission prompt will appear, stalling dust execution

Expected behaviour: when using --ignore-directory "/Users", dust does not try to access the Desktop folder, and the privacy permission prompt does not appear