Firewall settings not saving

Thanks. I have been running LittleSnitch for many years without any problems. I will ask the developer but I doubt very much that LS has anything to do with the macOS firewall.

BTW, I have turned on "Require an administrator password to access system-wide settings". Changing the Firewall settings should cause a popup requiring admin credentials – but, instead I get no popup and the settings do not stick. I will experiment with turning off the "Require ...." setting.

UPDATE: Nope, turning off "Require an admin ..." made no difference. I also tried turning off the Firewall (admin was required); quitting System Settings; re-opening System Settings; turning on Firewall (admin required). Found that "Block all incoming connections was off. But, still, no changes to the Firewall's settings stick and admin credentials are not requested. So, for example, I cannot Block all incoming connections.

UPDATE: Using socketfilterfw, changes to Firewall seems to stick. However, I am still getting the "Do you want the application "mediasharingd" to accept incoming network connections?" popup.

People have been reporting the mediasharingd popup for years. Why can't Apple fix it or release instructions on how to address it ? I spent 30 minutes in a support chat a couple of weeks ago and they suggested blocking incoming connections to mediasharingd. Later, I found that settings changed with the UI do not stick. Now I find that settings changed with socketfilterfw do stick but, don't stop the popup.

BTW, mediasharingd is located here:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AMPSharing.framework/Versions/A/Support/mediasharingd

I was on Montery just last week, and i often used to modify firewall settings and it worked perfectly.

Updated to Ventura over weekend now it wont accept any changes at all. I cant believe a bug like this even gets past Beta testing it's un-belivable.

Please fix this Apple, i wish to block all incoming connections on my mac, and i consider this a security risk. Why is it not fixed when MacOS was released last October.

Ive logged this with the feedback app, surely im not the only one

+1 on Apple not fixing bugs and even when they do they never admit a bug exists and that they have fixed it. There was an admittedly obscure bug in Pages which came and went without a single statement by Apple.

Anyway, I can confirm that using "socketfilterfw" works. Now that I've had a few cold boot cycles, it seems that it also solves the mediasharingd pop-up issue. I haven't had any for a couple of days.

However, it only worked for me when I used an administrator account. None of my standard user accounts can use sudo.

I believe (without minimal evidence) that the more people who report a bug to Apple the more likely it is to be fixed. So, use the feedback mechanism you are most comfortable with. I like the "Feedback Assistant".

I think I've found a reasonable work around... the problem is that Administrative privileges are needed to change firewall settings (hence needing "sudo" when using the command line options). For some reason the MacOS Systems Settings app does not request admin privileges when making individual changes to the firewall settings - only when turning the firewall off or on.

So the work around is, open System Settings app, after making changes to the individual firewall settings, toggle the entire firewall off and back on. This will prompt you for admin creds... after which the changes you made within the firewall settings will stick.

I called apple support but they didn't help for this problem. They advised re-install macOS to me :))

I re-installed macOS to make they feel good. there was previous version of macOS on Recovery steps. after installation finish, I checked this problem and I saw there was no problem. Then I upgraded macOS to ventura on system settings>update menu, after upgrading this problem started again. I tried primitive ways to prevent this primitive issue.

Finally I realized Garry's way and came to here for answer but he wrote already. cool

anyone who cannot do a magic trick with terminal (socketfilterfw) like me?

mac mini 2018 with Ventura 13.2.1 updated has the same problem

I'm trying `socketfilterfw --unblockapp`(same for blockapp), neither of w/ sudo nor w/o sudo toggle block.

With sudo it shows `The file path you specified does not exist` error, no changes on `--listapps`.

Without sudo, it seems working like `Incoming connection to the application is permitted` but no changes on `--listapps`.

No chance of typo for the path because I copied what is on `--listapps` result.

No changes though I tried `sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/Firewall` to kill and revive socketfilter.

Anybody?

+1 this is a major problem as nginx cannot open ports 80 & 443.

As far as I know there is a major tech industry that uses this for dev purposes, but it doesn't work now :/

Please fix asap Apple, thank you.

I thought this was fixed but in macOS 13.4.1 it's still an issue. This is the process I have to use to make changes to the Firewall settings:

- Open System Settings.

- Choose Network => Firewall.

- Click on “Options”.

- In the following pane, choose desired changes. NOTE: there is no request to enter admin credentials.

- Click on “OK”.

Nothing happens. The pane stays open. Only way to close the pane is to click “Cancel”. Then there is a dialog for providing admin credentials.

- Click on “Options”.

NO CHANGES have been saved.

- Make desired change again.

- Click on “OK”.

- Pane closes !

- Click on “Options” to check whether changes saved.

Today, on the first occasion the changes were not saved. On the second occasion, there were saved.

I've used Feedback Assistant to advise Apple it's still an issue.

Same issue.

Discovered that clicking "cancel" closes the options window as you'd expect, but brings up an authorisation pane - gave it my admin account details, and then was able to save my Firewall preferences as normal. Have noticed some similar glitches elsewhere in Ventura's settings regarding the order in which authorisation requests appear. Otherwise the only way I could close the settings pane was by using Force Quit, and of course nothing saved.

Ridiculous that this is the case, but figured I'd reply here in case others are looking for a solution.

https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/12039766

Filed FBA bug report so should be solved if there are detailed information for this macOS suspicious behavior. I hope.

Check out this: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/727913#727913021

I can’t post it here.

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?