Apple enhanced the safety of attaching and inserting thumb drives, printers, and reminiscence playing cards to (or into) the Thunderbolt, USB, and SD Card ports on M-series Apple silicon Macs in macOS, stating with Ventura. When something is plugged or inserted into a kind of ports, you’re requested to offer permission to proceed if it’s by no means been seen by the Mac earlier than. In case your Mac is locked, it should be unlocked earlier than you possibly can proceed.
The intent is to forestall somebody from inserting one thing that incorporates malicious firmware or for malicious functions—like copying the contents of your drive—with out specific permission being granted when the pc is unlocked.
Nevertheless, you may obtain this immediate for a tool, drive, or reminiscence card you’re positive you had used along with your Mac beforehand. That’s due to a safety footnote: after three days, macOS could determine to immediate you once more, beneath the belief that in case you aren’t utilizing the linked factor repeatedly, maybe one thing has gone amiss with it within the meantime. Is it overkill? I’m positive there’s a motive for the three-day timeout that Apple is aware of and isn’t disclosing.

You may management how macOS on an Apple silicon Mac permits or prompts equipment to attach.
Foundry
Should you discover these alerts pointless and annoying—say, your laptop is in your house and no one however you and trusted relations are ever close to it—you possibly can go to > System Settings > Privateness & Safety and set “Enable equipment to attach” to All the time or Routinely When Unlocked. Contrariwise, if you need the very best diploma of paranoia, set it to Ask Each Time.
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We’ve compiled an inventory of the questions we get requested most steadily, together with solutions and hyperlinks to columns: learn our tremendous FAQ to see in case your query is roofed. If not, we’re at all times in search of new issues to unravel! E mail yours to mac911@macworld.com, together with display captures as acceptable and whether or not you need your full title used. Not each query will likely be answered, we don’t reply to e mail, and we can’t present direct troubleshooting recommendation.