Permission denied: ~/Downloads - code: 13

[jLAM-ERR]

Hi, I'm not sure if this error is a agterm error.

Flow:

~ ❯ whoami
likhomanenkowork

~ ❯ l | grep Downloads
drwx------     - likhomanenkowork 20 Aug 13:20  Downloads

~ ❯ cd Downloads
~/Downloads ❯ l
Permission denied: . - code: 13

Skipped 1 directories due to permission denied:

❯ ps aux | grep agterm
likhomanenkowork  1378   0.8  0.6 440907424 202016   ??  S    19Jul26 562:56.22 /Applications/agterm.app/Contents/MacOS/agterm

l - is an alias 'ls -lah'

I tried to reproduce it using kitty. This flow is working correctly.

Versions

macOS 26.5.2 (25F84)
agterm Version 0.14.0 (ed0e4c6)
starship 1.26.0
zsh 5.9.2 (aarch64-apple-darwin25.4.0)

[umputun]

most likely this is macOS, not agterm, but your output does not prove it either way and a couple of checks will tell us.

~/Downloads, ~/Desktop and ~/Documents are protected by macOS itself. Every app needs its own grant, and grants are never shared between apps, so kitty working says nothing about agterm - you approved kitty at some point, probably long ago, and agterm has either never been asked or was answered "Don't Allow" once, in which case macOS never asks again.

so first: do you remember a macOS dialog saying agterm would like to access files in your Downloads folder, and what did you answer? A dismissed or declined prompt is the usual cause here and it is never re-offered.

second, what I cannot tell from your paste is whether that is what happened at all. l is eza, and code: 13 is eza's own label rather than the real errno - it prints that same line for a privacy denial and for ordinary permission bits. So pls run the real ls against the folder:

/bin/ls -la ~/Downloads

Operation not permitted means macOS privacy, Permission denied means file permissions or an ACL, and those need different fixes.

third, check System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Files & Folders and tell me what it shows for agterm and for kitty. If agterm is listed with Downloads off, turn it on. If agterm is not listed at all, Full Disk Access on the same page takes it from the + button without waiting for a prompt.

one more thing: 0.14.0 is ten releases back (current is 0.24.0). Nothing in this area changed, so I do not expect an update to fix it, but pls reproduce on current before we dig further.

I have documented the whole case in the troubleshooting guide since it was not covered there at all, #470.

[jLAM-ERR]

do you remember a macOS dialog

Sorry, no.

From agterm 0.14.0 (I'm updated to latest ver, nothing has changed)

~ ❯ /bin/ls -la ~/Downloads
total 0
ls: /Users/likhomanenkowork/Downloads: Operation not permitted

check System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Files & Folders

I fixed it myself by exec tccutil reset SystemPolicyDownloadsFolder com.umputun.agterm .

Thx!