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Native Access installation failed: Full Disk Access and NTKDaemon issue on macOS Tahoe

TOMASRDC

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue with Native Access on a new MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon M5 PRO running macOS Tahoe.

“Installation Failed: You may need to grant full disk access to Native Access and the Daemon.”

I have already tried the following:

Granted Full Disk Access to Native Access
Looked for NTKDaemon and added it manually the first time
Restarted the Mac
Tried repairing/forgetting products in Native Access
Reinstalled Native Access
Checked that all audio applications were closed before installing

I also get repair/forget issues with some products. For example, when trying to forget Blocks Base, Native Access shows:

“Cleanup of install state failed for product with upid 75cd0d82-4d4d-4772-86f3-8a6591de9920”

It seems like Native Access or the Daemon is not installing or running correctly, or macOS is blocking the install process.

Could this be related to macOS Tahoe or Apple Silicon M5 PRO compatibility? Is there a manual way to reinstall or reset NTKDaemon properly?

After deleting all Native Access related files and folders and reinstalling it, I noticed that NTKDaemon was granted Full Disk Access automatically, without needing to add it manually. I guess this was an improvement. However, now every time I start up the computer, macOS asks for authorisation again.

I’ve attached screenshots of the errors and permissions. Hopefully the photos make sense.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Tomas

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Accepted answers

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/50709/native-access-installation-failed-full-disk-access-and-ntkdaemon-issue-on-macos-tahoe

Did you also try following this trouble shooter ? :

Native Access Error: "Please grant permission to NTK Daemon to install dependencies"

Else then if you want to uninstall - reinstall then you most likely needs to properly delete everything N.A. and NTKDaemon + reboot before attempting a reinstall.

Native Access Crashes or Freezes (Mac)

TOMASRDC

Native Access Error: "Please grant permission to NTK Daemon to install dependencies"

Did this one and worked, thanks.

All comments

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/50709/native-access-installation-failed-full-disk-access-and-ntkdaemon-issue-on-macos-tahoe

Did you also try following this trouble shooter ? :

Native Access Error: "Please grant permission to NTK Daemon to install dependencies"

Else then if you want to uninstall - reinstall then you most likely needs to properly delete everything N.A. and NTKDaemon + reboot before attempting a reinstall.

Native Access Crashes or Freezes (Mac)

Jeremy_NI

@TOMASRDC In one of the screenshots we can see CCleaner is installed. This kind of programs is sometimes deleting system files, you can read all about it in this article: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/209544929-Notes-on-Using-Registry-or-Property-List-Cleaning-Utilities

What you're experiencing could be related. If there's a way to whitelist both Native Access and the NTKDaemon or disable it for testing purposes at first, please give it a shot.

TOMASRDC

Native Access Error: "Please grant permission to NTK Daemon to install dependencies"

Did this one and worked, thanks.

TOMASRDC

Managed to install most of it, same issue happens again with Previews Library. Any clue?

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/261438#Comment_261438

For the Previews library, it's a different issue but here's the solution:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/49093/previews-library-not-being-installed-on-macos-sequoia-and-tahoe

TOMASRDC

Done that and now this stays loading forever, any thoughts?

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/261487#Comment_261487

Have you tried this ? : Native Access freezes on “Loading Products“ at startup

polyphonix

Native Access on macOS Tahoe: every install fails with ERROR_CODE_WRITE_REGISTRY_FAILED — root cause + fix

If you're on macOS Tahoe (26.x) and Native Access has been failing every
install/repair, with full Kontakt libraries (The Gentleman, Studio
Drummer, Abbey Road, etc.) loading silently with a red DEMO label
even though the libraries appear "installed" — this is a known bug in
NA on Tahoe. NI has not shipped a fix as of May 2026. Verified on macOS
26.3.1 with Native Access 3.24.0.

The bug is not corrupted content, not SIP, not TCC, and
not filesystem permissions. It's a single misconfigured launchd
flag that takes ~30 seconds to fix.

TL;DR — The fix

# 1. Confirm this is the bug
sudo launchctl print-disabled system | grep -i native
# If you see:  "com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2" => disabled
# then run:

sudo launchctl enable system/com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2
sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2.plist
sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2

# 2. Verify (look for state = running and a real PID)
sudo launchctl print system/com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2 | grep -E "state|pid"

# 3. Restart NA + its daemon so they reconnect to the now-running helper.
#    THIS STEP IS NON-OPTIONAL — without it NA still fails because its
#    XPC handle to the old (non-running) helper is stale.
osascript -e 'quit app "Native Access"'
killall NTKDaemon
sleep 2
open -a "Native Access"

That's it. After step 3, hit Repair/Install in NA — EVENT: InstallationSucceeded instead of InstallationFailed ... ERROR_CODE_WRITE_REGISTRY_FAILED in the daemon log. Reload any
DEMO-mode patches in Kontakt and the DEMO label disappears.

The fix is system-wide — it unbreaks every NI install/repair on
the machine, not just one library.

How to know this is the bug you're hitting

Symptoms (any combination):

NA toasts "Installation Failed" with no obvious reason
Kontakt full libraries load but show DEMO next to the patch name
and play silently (no audible 30-second buzz like older Kontakt demo
mode — modern Kontakt full libs in unactivated state just produce
nothing)
Failed installs leave duplicate copies at /Users/Shared/<Library> Library/

Confirm in /Users/Shared/Native Instruments/Logs/NTK/daemon.log:

PrivilegesHelper.cpp:103 Using elevated permissions to copy
ProductInfoDownloader.cpp:170 Could not copy from /tmp/<id>.xml to: /Library/Application Support/Native Instruments/Service Center
SlimInstaller.cpp:45 Error writing registry information for <UPID>
EVENT: InstallationFailed (... Error: ERROR_CODE_WRITE_REGISTRY_FAILED)

If the Could not copy line appears AND the helper is in launchd's
disabled list (the print-disabled command above), this fix applies.

What's actually broken

Native Access ships a privileged helper LaunchDaemon called
com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2. NA's GUI and daemon run
as the user; the helper runs as root. Two operations need root and go
through the helper:

Copying the master license blob NativeAccess.xml into
/Library/Application Support/Native Instruments/Service Center/
Writing the install registry that NA's SlimInstaller uses to mark
a deployment as "succeeded"

On Tahoe, that helper ends up in launchd's disabled allow-list on
disk (/var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/). With it disabled:

sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/...Helper2.plist
fails with Bootstrap failed: 5: Input/output error (EIO from
launchd refusing to load a disabled service).
The helper binary never runs.
NA's daemon (NTKDaemon) calls the helper via XPC, the call falls
through, every elevated copy fails — both the master license XML
and the registry write.

The Service Center directory itself is fine (drwxrwxr-x root:admin,
no immutable flags, nothing exotic). A manual sudo cp into it
succeeds. The problem really is just "helper isn't running because
launchd considers it disabled."

Why `bootstrap` alone doesn't work

A common first attempt is:

sudo launchctl bootout system/com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2
sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.native-instruments.NativeAccess.Helper2.plist

That returns Bootstrap failed: 5: Input/output error because the
helper is in launchd's disabled list — bootstrap won't load a disabled
service, regardless of how clean the plist is.

You have to run launchctl enable system/<label> first to remove it
from the disabled list. Only then will bootstrap succeed.

Why you have to restart NTKDaemon and NA

Even after the helper is running, NA still fails until you kill
NTKDaemon and reopen NA. NTKDaemon caches an XPC connection handle to
the helper at startup. If the helper wasn't running when NTKDaemon
started, that handle is dead and NTKDaemon won't reconnect on its
own. Killing NTKDaemon (and quitting NA so launchd respawns both)
forces a fresh XPC connection to the now-running helper.

I confirmed this in testing — running just steps 1–2 (bringing the
helper alive) wasn't enough; the next install attempt still failed.
Step 3 (the daemon restart) was required.

After the fix — cleanup

Duplicate copies in `/Users/Shared/`

NA's failed-install path defaults to /Users/Shared/<Library> Library/
even when your actual content path is set elsewhere. After running a
few failed Repairs, you may have multi-GB duplicates sitting there.

ls -la /Users/Shared/ | grep -i Library  # see what's lingering

If the canonical install at your real content path (e.g.
~/Documents/Native Instruments/... or whatever you've set) is
intact, the /Users/Shared/... copy is safe to delete to reclaim
disk.

`installed_products` JSON paths

Failed installs sometimes rewrite the JSON to point at
/Users/Shared/... instead of your real location. Sanity check:

for js in /Users/Shared/Native\ Instruments/installed_products/*.json; do
  cd=$(/usr/bin/python3 -c "import json,sys; print(json.load(open(sys.argv[1])).get('ContentDir',''))" "$js")
  [ -n "$cd" ] && [ ! -d "$cd" ] && echo "MISSING: $(basename "$js" .json) → $cd"
done

For anything reported, either reinstall via NA (if the library is
truly gone from disk) or hand-edit the JSON to point at the correct
location and run NA Repair to re-sync the rest of the state.

komplete.db3 path mismatches

If you have multiple komplete.db3 files (KK, Kontakt 7, Kontakt 8,
Massive X each have their own) and a library shows different paths
across them, align them all to the same canonical path. Quit all NI
hosts before editing, back up the DBs, then UPDATE k_content_path SET path='...', state=0 WHERE id=N;. State=0 forces a rescan on next
launch.

Reload vs Repair vs Reinstall (don't redownload everything)

After running the fix, the master NativeAccess.xml license blob is
written. That alone activates every library you own — Kontakt
reads it at patch-load time.

| Library state | What you need |
|---|---|
| On disk, was working before bug | Nothing — keep using it |
| On disk, currently DEMO | Reload patch in Kontakt (most cases). Some Kontakt versions cache license at startup, so quitting Kontakt entirely may be needed. |
| On disk, reload didn't clear DEMO | NA Repair (writes any per-library XML; fast, no redownload) |
| Missing from disk | NA Install (full download) |

Don't blindly reinstall everything; full installs of Kontakt/Komplete
libraries take hours. Reload first, Repair second, Install only for
truly missing ones.

Why does this happen?

Unknown — most likely culprits in order:

Native Access self-update. When NA updates itself, its
installer can run launchctl disable (or the modern SMAppService
equivalent), leaving the helper in the disabled list. Watch for
this after every NA update.
macOS Tahoe point updates. Apple keeps tightening third-party
background daemon rules; a 26.x update may re-disable it.
Manual disable.

The disabled state persists across reboots (it's on-disk in
/var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/), so the symptom doesn't go away by
restarting your Mac.

If the symptom comes back after an NA self-update, the same fix
re-applies — it's idempotent.

Diagnostic decision tree

NA "Installation Failed" / DEMO mode in Kontakt
          │
          ▼
sudo launchctl print-disabled system | grep -i native
          │
   ┌──────┴──────┐
   ▼             ▼
"disabled"    "enabled"
   │             │
   ▼             ▼
Run fix above  Different problem:
               — Check daemon.log for path errors → fix komplete.db3 rows
               — Check FinderInfo xattrs on .nkc files (separate Tahoe bug;
                 NA sometimes skips setting NiKC/NiK8 type+creator codes
                 → Kontakt reports "samples missing")
               — Check installed_products/<Name>.json ContentDir vs disk

If anyone from NI is reading: the fix the installer needs is to
re-enable the helper in launchd's allow-list before (or instead of)
calling bootstrap, and to ensure NTKDaemon retries its XPC connection
to the helper if the initial connect fails. Probably a one-line patch
in the post-install scriptlet.

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