CastleGuard For Mac

macOS comes with various built-in security measures in an attempt to make the operating system as safe as possible. One of these practices refers to sandboxing applications, which means that the utilities have explicit permissions for interacting with other services.

CastleGuard is a minimalist OS X application that can review all installed applications, let you know if each utility is sandboxed or not, and if so, which permissions it holds.

Upon launch, CastleGuard will scan your system in order to detect all the utilities that are installed at that given time.

Note that CastleGuard performs the scan only when you open the app, and does not provide support for refreshing the list (in case you have removed apps in the meantime).

The CastleGuard user interface is organized in a very intuitive manner: the left panel holds the list of installed apps, while on the right you get to see details for the currently selected item.

CastleGuard can identify the developer ID, the app version, check if the utility is running or not, and the process ID. To help you differentiate between entries faster, CastleGuard also includes the icon for each application.

Bottom line, if one of the apps installed on your Mac is not sandboxed, CastleGuard lets you know that the utility can perform any task on behalf of the user. As a result, you must decide on your own if you trust the app or not.

On the other hand, if the application is sandboxed, CastleGuard lists all the permissions used by the application together with their status (enabled or not). CastleGuard comes with an info panel that provides details about the data handled by each capability.

All this information is meant to help you understand how each utility interacts with the system and the type of data to which it has access. In conclusion, you will be able to make an informed decision when it comes to trusting a particular app or not.