MacOS access denied to backup Fotos Library.photoslibrary

Support
1

When I try to Backup the Apple Fotos Library I get the following warning in Duplicati:

  • 2025-06-06 09:00:07 +02 - [Warning-Duplicati.Library.Main.Operation.Backup.FileEnumerationProcess-FileAccessError]: Error reported while accessing file: /Users/someone/Pictures/Fotos Library.photoslibrary/ UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path ‘/Users/stef/Pictures/Fotos Library.photoslibrary’ is denied.

In the System Settings → Privacy & Security - Duplicati has:
Full Disk Access
therefore also Photos access

This used to work with previous macOS and Duplicati Versions. Even completely setting up the backups from scratch did not help.

Using MacOs 15.5, Duplicati: 2.1.0.5_stable_2025-03-04

Thanks in advance for any help!

2

Hi @Stef_LeChef, welcome to the forum :waving_hand:

Not quite. There are some things that are considered “more private” than full disk access, including photos and contacts. Apps running on macOS cannot access these special folders without being approved and vetted by Apple, which Duplicati currently is not.

There is no permission you can toggle to grant Duplicati access, so for now, the workaround is to get an approved app, like Photos, to export it and back up from there. You can use a small script such as:

mkdir ~/ExportedPhotos
photos export ~/ExportedPhotos
3

Thanks kenkendk, I wasn’t aware of that! As much as I appreciate Apple prioritising security, this is a bit of nuisance.
While experimenting with previous workarounds from the time when Dduplicati’s tray icon did not work, I just discovered another workaround:
Start Duplicati from the Terminal.app (with full disk access) with the command
open -a /Applications/Duplicati.app/Contents/MacOS/duplicati
I put this in a shell script with .command extension and launch Duplicati from there. You can even experiment with other options of the open command

4

Smart workaround, I did not consider that.

On my own machine, I can see that I somehow managed to grant iTerm access to my Photos in “Privacy & Security”. That suggests that we can perhaps give Duplicati an entitlement, which would then allow it to show up as an app that can be granted access.

EDIT: I looked at iTerm2, and it seems it just has a NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription that grants the access. I have applied that to Duplicati for the next release.

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