macOS Sequoia adds weekly permission prompt for screen recording apps

Before yesterday&#x27;s Sequoia update, this was a daily permission prompt.<p>In a vacuum, I don&#x27;t consider this to be an extremely poor decision; the system picker has a mostly-sane interface. Apps that capture the screen currently have an extremely long leash, and the hole for an app that decided to become malicious and start (for example) exfiltrating capture data is... extremely wide.<p>However, for apps that took pains prior to macOS Sequoia in offering a reasonable and privacy-focused consent interface for screen capture (that doesn&#x27;t use the picker, that is), this prompt is insulting and a slap in the face. Apple did not do a good job with its developers with the introduction of this &#x27;feature&#x27;.<p>Furthermore, the system picker lacks important functionality (can&#x27;t capture apps without currently visible windows, can&#x27;t do &#x27;everything-except-these-apps&#x27; captures) and its configurations have no time-to-live, meaning an app would have to use the picker every single time it starts up, or else get this prompt. This really undermines the picker and the prompt&#x27;s effectiveness, and it&#x27;s disappointing to see something well-intentioned be self-defeating in this way.<p>In general, ScreenCaptureKit is one of the most poorly managed and poorly functioning APIs Apple has introduced in recent years. It offers solid functionality, but every release introduces a legion of new bugs and performance regressions. I dunno if someone key to this APIs success quit or what, but it really needs to be fixed up by someone with actual care for the details.

Apple won&#x27;t say it explicitly, but this change is designed to limit access to data that can be used to build systems or applications that understand the context of the things you&#x27;re working on on this machine. This is just one small example of Apple&#x27;s strategy to build the world&#x27;s smartest operating system. The operating system&#x27;s built-in artificial intelligence-based assistants need screenshots over time to understand context. A picture is worth a thousand words. A vein of gold.

<i>deep exasperated sigh</i><p>If you&#x27;re too young to remember a time when Windows didn&#x27;t bug you every five minutes with a prompt that said &#x27;Isn&#x27;t there someone you forgot to ask?&#x27;, you should know computers used to just silently do what you wanted them to do. Shame that macOS is going the same way.

I’ve had less and less incentive to upgrade every year for over a decade.<p>I wonder when I’ll reach a tipping point.

I wonder what kind of impact this will have on boss-ware. Will there be ways to override this from an administrator point of view?

DisplayLink (that allows to add more external displays than what Apple allows) relies on the screen recording feature. I think it creates virtual displays, captures and pipe them to the connected monitors.<p>It&#x27;s going to be very annoying if I have to grant it permission on a weekly basis

It would be much nicer if screen recording permissions does not need the application to be restarted. Then they could even ask the screen recording permissions for every specific instance if they wanted.

Sad to hear as someone currently building an app with screen recording capabilities. Hopefully the outrage is enough for them to reconsider

It&#x27;s just disappointing that the direction of computing is towards ever stupider lower more basic levels for the foreseeable. This sort of guarding &amp; lowering of expectations is the only thing the OS seems to be working on these days.

Will Apple&#x27;s apps trigger the same weekly permission prompt?

Guessing this is going to kill Bartender. I don’t love that it does screen recording, but this is probably the nail in the coffin.

This is a bad article, missing half what it needs to cover the subject. It’s mostly describing a single dialog box with two affordances, and it only describes the effect of one of them — “Continue to Allow”. It’s reasonable to think that the other — “Open System Settings” - allows one to make the change permanently.