ls : operation not permitted

To me, the whole point of using xterm is as a replacement for Terminal.app. So running through Terminal.app defeats the purpose.

I found that a more direct solution was to give "Full Disk Access" to /bin/bash. This is a bit counter-intuitive, since I actually use /bin/tcsh for my shell (yeah, I know, I'm a luddite). I'm not sure whether bash is involved because my tcsh is a descendant of a bash process, or because the ls command is using bash in some way. But it is certainly true that I can toggle whether "ls ~/Documents" works by checking/unchecking bash in the Full Disk Access panel.

It’d usually be enabling “full disk access” permissions for Xterm in System Preferences > Security. Add the Xterm.app there, if that's not what you’ve done. If that’’s not working, check if you’re logged in as a different user? Check the permissions (ls -aled@ or ilk) on the ~Documents directory, too.

try this, for me it works:

1) put Terminal.app in Security & Privacy (Full Disk Access)

2) open Terminal.app

3) type xterm inside Terminal.app -> this will lunch XQuartz

4) if now you open xterm from XQuartz you can "ls" everything.

xterm is not an app, there is no such thing as "Xterm.app". xterm is an X11 terminal emulator with runs within XQuartz.app, which is why @BenKil describes the failed solution that he tried.

I have also tried adding /opt/X11/bin/xterm to the "Full Disk Access" permissions, but that did not help either. Any other ideas?