macOS Privacy and Security Hardening Guide
A Mac out of the box is tuned for Apple's convenience, not for your exposure. This is the list of changes that shifts that default, ordered so you can work through it with the machine in front of you.
Topic
Apple
A collection of 8 issues
App Privacy Report: What Your Apple Device Is Actually Doing
Switch it on, wait a day, then look for the entries that make no sense: the calculator with location access, the domain your phone talks to all night. Useful for spotting outliers, poor at everything else.
Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (Encrypted Cloud Storage)
Switching it on takes a couple of minutes. The part that matters is the 28 characters Apple shows you once: lose them and nobody, Apple included, can open your iCloud data again.
Disable Ad Tracking on Apple Devices (2026)
Apple sells advertising too, and the profile used to aim it is built on your own device. Three separate switches, in three different places, and turning off one does nothing to the other two.
Safety Check and Access Audit (Apple)
Access accumulates quietly: a shared album, a partner's old device, an app you approved once and forgot. Apple built a wizard that lists all of it in one place, and one button that revokes the lot.
Remove Stored Wi-Fi Networks (Apple)
The networks your iPhone remembers are a travel history: hotels, offices, airports, a friend's flat. Clearing the list is less alarming than the menu makes it look.
Disable Siri on iPhone
Two minutes in Settings. Switching Siri off is the easy part; the recordings Apple is already holding need a separate request before they go anywhere.
Apple "10" List
Ten things an iPhone owner should be able to do without looking them up — including wiping the device after ten wrong passcodes, and finding the location switches that are not on the main screen.