Microsoft confirms that Windows 11 will ask for your consent before it allows an AI Agent to access your files stored in the six known folders, which include Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos. You can also customize file access permissions for each agent.

This clarification comes after growing concerns around Microsoft’s push to bring AI agents deeper into Windows. Over the past few weeks, the company has been laying the groundwork for agent-based experiences that can interact with your files, apps, and system settings, even while openly admitting that AI models can misbehave, hallucinate, or create new security risks.

Until now, Microsoft hadn’t clearly explained how file access would work in practice, or whether users would have control over what these agents could see.

As first spotted by Windows Latest, on December 5, Microsoft quietly updated its Experimental Agentic Features support document to explain how consent, permissions, and agent connectors work in preview builds 26100.7344 and newer, finally confirming that AI agents cannot access your personal files by default and must explicitly ask for permission.

AI Agents in Windows 11 will need your permission to access files from known folders

A couple of weeks ago, Windows Latest pointed out how Microsoft wants to give AI access to your files and apps, even while admitting that such AI agents can misbehave and pose security risks.

“AI models still face functional limitations in terms of how they behave and occasionally may hallucinate and produce unexpected outputs”, says the company in their support document.

Of course, a company confessing that its most promoted product introduces novel security risks cannot be taken lightly under any circumstances.

We noticed that although Microsoft insists that AI agents run under an agentic workspace, which is separate from the user workspace, and have limited permissions, Windows will still grant them access to your Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders, which are collectively called the known folders.

This happened when you enabled the “Experimental Agentic features” toggle in Settings > System > AI components. Earlier, enabling the above toggle was supposed to grant access to these folders to all AI agents.

The company hadn’t made it clear how the agents could access these folders and whether or not we would be able to manage access.

However, Microsoft was quick to respond with an update to the support document after Windows Latest reached out for statements. Microsoft says it’s adding a clear consent step for AI agents. Even if you turn on Experimental agentic features, an agent doesn’t automatically get to read your files.

You can also give separate permissions for individual agents, like Copilot, Researcher, or Analyst, to these folders collectively.

Yes, it means that while you can give per-agent access to the known folders, you cannot choose which of the six folders an AI agent can have access to. It’s either all of them or none of them.

I would prefer it if the Researcher and Analyst agents had all-time access to my Documents folder, while Copilot has to ask me every time if it needs access to any of my personal folders. But that’s not the case here.

That being said, you can still choose if the AI agent can get unlimited access at all times, or just allow access once, or no access at all. If an AI agent, like Copilot, needs to get hold of your files to complete a task, you’ll get a pop-up from which you can choose “Always allow”, “Allow once”, or “Not now”.

These options are only available for systems with preview builds 26100.7344 and above for 24H2, 26200.7344 and above for 25H2.

AI Agents get a dedicated Settings page in Windows 11

Each agent you have in Windows now gets its own Settings page from where you can manage its permission to access your files. In the screenshot below, you can change permissions to Connectors in Copilot, like OneDrive and Google Drive integration.

The other “Connectors” just below Files and Connectors are, in fact, Agent Connectors, which are powered by Model Context Protocol (MCP) and are standardized bridges that allow AI agents to interact with apps in Windows. Microsoft is currently testing this with its push to bring AI Agents to the taskbar.

In the screenshot provided by Microsoft, you can also see two Agent Connectors, which let the Agent use the File Explorer app and System Settings app. You can set individual permissions for each of these, which means you can either allow AI agents to use these apps at all times, only once when you allow, or never at all.

To access these settings, go to the Settings app, select System > AI Components > Agents.

You’ll see the list of Agents available on your PC’s Windows OS. Select the agent and customize what these agents can access on your PC.

In the case of Files, Microsoft gives you three options. The Allow Always option gives the agent access to the six known folders whenever it has to. Selecting the Ask every time option will make Windows show you a prompt to give permission to share files in these folders when the agent needs them.

Of course, the Not now option will make Windows deny the request of the agent to access the folders.

This is a solution to a problem that Microsoft created when it said that AI would have access to your files. Anyway, the ability to manage permissions is good enough for now.

That being said, Microsoft also says that “​​​​​​​Agent accounts have access to any folders that all authenticated users have access to, e.g., public user profiles.”

If the folder permissions include groups like Users / Authenticated Users with read access, then an agent account could access it.

If the folder is locked to your user account (plus SYSTEM/Admins), then the agent account won’t have access unless Windows explicitly grants it via the known-folder consent flow.

Note that Microsoft has no word on when AI will be able to stop hallucinating or avoid novel security issues like cross-prompt injection (XPIA).

Interestingly, Microsoft made it a point to post in X that AI in Windows 11 will empower people “securely”, even as malware risks are unavoidable.