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Designating a different MacOS proxy for My Documents

Crossover does a brilliant job of getting most Windows applications to use the ~/Documents folder as the Windows user's My Documents folder by setting up some kind of alias or symlink within the bottle at ...BottleName/drive_c/users/crossover/My Documents. For most applications, this works perfectly.

However, the ~/Documents folder under Big Sur (and possibly older versions of MacOS, I have not checked) has special permissions set. If a Get Info via the Finder is run on the ~/Documents folder, rather than offering options to set permissions for various users and groups, the folder just has the words "You have custom access" where the permissions controls normally appear. This is a problem for some Windows applications which cannot access the ~/Documents folder or any of its nested folders or other contents due to lack of permission.

In some cases, the Windows application performs its file saves into the ~/Documents folder without a problem. But then I need to run a Java application to work with the same files and – again, due to the permissions oddness of the ~/Documents folder – I can't do so because no Java application has permission to access the ~/Documents folder. In these cases, I need to move the files (or rather, their enclosing folder) out of the ~/Documents folder in order for the Java application to work with them and then move them back when done so that the Windows application I run with Crossover for Mac can access them afterward.

Is there some way to force a specific Windows application running in Crossover for Mac, or all Windows applications running within a specific Crossover for Mac bottle, to treat some arbitrary folder as the My Documents folder? In some cases a folder within the bottle such as ...BottleName/drive_c/users/crossover/Saved Games might be appropriate, or perhaps some arbitrary folder not within a Crossover bottle.

Alternatively, is there some way to change the permissions settings of the ~/Documents folder of the currently active MacOS user account without doing something destructive or irreversible?

Hi John,

Interesting, I have never run into applications that had trouble with the permissions of my ~/Documents folder. You can change the folder that links to “My Documents” in Wine Configuration for a given bottle: navigate to Desktop Integration, uncheck “Manage file associations” and then you can change the “Link to” field for any given folder.

Best,
Meredith

Perfect! Thank you very much. There’s still so much Crossover can do that I haven’t discovered yet!

I’ve also researched a method for giving Java the needed permissions:
https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2020/20200119_1427-macOS-Catalina-add-java-fullDiskAccess.html
…so I have a complete solution now.

For anyone else needing to provide permission to Java applications so that they can access the ~/Documents folder, the item that needs to be added to System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Accessibility and System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Full Disc Access is:
JavaLauncher.app
You will find JavaLauncher.app here:
/System/Library/CoreServices/JavaLauncher
The .app and its enclosing folders are not hidden by default so all you have to do is drag it into the appropriate sections of the pref pane after you "Click the lock to make changes."

This Java stuff isn't related to Crossover so please excuse this, I think it might be helpful even for some folks even if it is not 100% on topic here.

Please Note: This Forum is for non-application specific questions relating to installation/configuration of CrossOver. All application-specific posts to this Forum will be moved to their appropriate Compatibility Center Forum.

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