Background
Apple has introduced a security mechanism with macOS 10.14 (Mojave), which requires special access to be granted to remote control applications like TeamViewer.
And macOS 10.15 (Catalina) has strengthened the security and privacy even further and requires additional permissions to be given to TeamViewer in order to control your Mac.
Without this access, TeamViewer users connecting to macOS 10.14 or higher will only be able to view the screen but not control it with their mouse or keyboard.
And TeamViewer users connecting to macOS 10.15 or higher will additionally only be able to view the desktop background and the TeamViewer app, but not any other applications at all.
These additional permissions must be granted locally on the Mac and some of them require admin rights.
Please find the different how-to guides for the setup on Mojave and Catalina below.
📌Note: TeamViewer is not able to grant this access by itself, nor can the access be granted remotely through a TeamViewer connection from another computer.
How to grant access to TeamViewer on your Mac
If you’re starting TeamViewer 14 or higher on your Mac running macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or higher for the first time, you will be prompted with the following dialog:
You can also open this dialog by clicking on Help –> Check system access.
By default, all permissions are set to Denied. Please give permission to the system capabilities manually to use TeamViewer as desired. If you or others need to access the Mac remotely, Screen Recording and Accessibility are required at a minimum.
📌Note: If you are managing Macs in your organizations through an MDM system, you can use Privacy Preferences Policy Control (PPPC) payloads to configure Accessibility and Full Disk Access permissions. Your users will still need to grant Screen Recording access themselves, this permission does not require admin credentials.
To allow the access, click the buttons shown in the dialog. Eg. click to allow Accessibility, click on Request Access… – then confirm by clicking on Open System Preferences
which will bring you to the Accessibility section of the Privacy panel, inside the Security & Privacy preferences:
For the Accessibility access, you will need to click the padlock icon in the lower-left corner to make changes. You might be prompted to enter the credentials of an administrator account to continue.
Put a check next to TeamViewer to grant it access:
📌Note: If you are seeing the entry TeamViewer_Desktop in your list, make sure to check this box as well.
Repeat the same for Full Disk Access and Screen Recording. Those are required to control your Mac.
Click again on the padlock in the lower-left corner to prevent further changes.
Once you have done it for every category, you can close the Security & Privacy window. The next time you want to receive an incoming connection with TeamViewer, the person connecting to your Mac will be able to see and control your device.
The permission status can be reviewed under Help -> Check system access at any time.
The yellow triangle icon in the upper-left area of the TeamViewer window is shown until you have allowed the system access for TeamViewer:
📌Note: if you’re using an older version of TeamViewer, you won’t see the triangle icon above. Instead, the Mac will display a system dialog informing you that TeamViewer wants to access additional resources. The settings must be changed on the remote side.
How to grant access when you aren’t presented with the dialog
If you’re using an older version of TeamViewer, and you’re not presented with the Review System Access dialog asking you to grant access to TeamViewer – or if you had previously clicked the Deny button on that dialog – it’s still possible to grant access to TeamViewer.
Additionally, in some cases, you can grant access to TeamViewer immediately after installing TeamViewer onto your Mac, before the first TeamViewer connection is made to your computer. Note that this is not possible with TeamViewer Host.
Here’s how:
1) Go to System Preferences, then Security & Privacy, then Privacy, then Screen Recording, Full Disk Access, and Accessibility.
2) Only for Accessibility: Click the lock icon to make changes.
3) If TeamViewer is already shown in the panel, then put a check next to it to enable it.
4) If not, click the small button with the plus symbol underneath the panel. This opens a Finder window:
5) Navigate to your Applications folder, select TeamViewer, and click Open.
6) Now you should have TeamViewer listed in the panel and enabled.