How-to guide for macOS Catalina

How to grant access to TeamViewer on your Mac

If you're starting TeamViewer 14.7 on your Mac running macOS 10.15 (Catalina) 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.

To allow the access, click the buttons shown in the dialog. Eg. click Open Full Disk Access Preferences... which will bring you to the Full Disk Access section of the Privacy pane, 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 will be prompted to enter the credentials of an administrator account to continue.

Put a check next to TeamViewer to grant it access:

Repeat the same for Screen Recording and Accessibility if desired. Those are required to control your Mac.

Click again on the padlock in the lower-left corner to prevent further changes.

Now 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 screen.

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 pane, then put a check next to it to enable it.
    
4. If not, click the small button with the plus symbol underneath the pane. 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 pane and enabled.

How to grant access when starting TeamViewer with System

If you enable the setting Start TeamViewer with System, which is found in TeamViewer’s Preferences, then TeamViewer will restart using a different process called TeamViewer_Desktop (only for Accessibility).

This is also the case when using TeamViewer Host.

The first time a connection is made to your Mac after doing this, you will be presented with the Review System Access dialog once more, but this time referring to the new process. You will need to grant access once again by clicking the button “Open System Preferences” and following the same steps outlined above.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to grant access to the TeamViewer_Desktop process manually. You will need to wait until the first incoming connection is made to your Mac before you can add this process.