AnyDesk not working…Solved

Hi @sophia_miller, welcome to the Hexnode community!

To help us narrow this down, could you let me know if AnyDesk was deployed directly through Hexnode, or if these are legacy installations? Also, do you have any strict app allowlisting policies configured and deployed to these devices that might be interfering with AnyDesk’s background processes?

As a quick side note, Hexnode also includes a built-in Remote View and Control feature natively in the portal. It is a great alternative if you ever want to consolidate your IT support tools in the future!

Since you just migrated MDMs, macOS can sometimes cache old security permissions. Here is the best workflow to force macOS and AnyDesk to refresh those security tokens:

1. Force a Refresh: AnyDesk often requires a full restart of the application (and sometimes a full reboot of the Mac) after permissions are granted via MDM for the security token to properly refresh.
2. Manually Reset Privacy Toggles: If a reboot doesn’t work, try clearing the cached permissions on a test device:
   1. Open System Settings/Preferences > Privacy & Security.
   2. Navigate to Accessibility.
   3. Highlight AnyDesk and click the minus (-) button to remove it entirely.
   4. Click the plus (+) button and re-add AnyDesk directly from the Applications folder.
   5. Repeat this exact process for Screen Recording.
3. Check AnyDesk’s Internal Settings: If macOS settings are perfectly aligned, the block might be coming from the app itself. Open the AnyDesk app on the target Mac and check the Interactive Access settings. If it is set to “Only allow if AnyDesk window is open” or “Never show“, you will get an access denied error regardless of your OS-level permissions.

Please let me know if these steps resolve the connection issue for you!

Cheers,
Eden Pierce
Hexnode UEM

Hi again, 

Thanks for the detailed steps! You were right about the cached permissions. Manually removing and re-adding AnyDesk under the Privacy & security settings did the trick. It is working perfectly fine now. 

I appreciate the tip about the native remote tools as well. We will definitely test that out once we finish settling into the new MDM. Thanks for the quick help!