Apple has relented at least somewhat regarding a privacy-related pop-up in testing with macOS Sequoia, ensuring that this prompt now doesn’t appear as often as it did before in the beta.
This is the somewhat annoying screen recording privacy prompt that appeared weekly (for affected apps that use screen recording) and after every reboot of the Mac.
However, as 9to5Mac reports, with the latest developer beta 6 of macOS Sequoia, the prompt has been adjusted to pop up only once a month. So, you won’t have to approve screen recording permissions for every app that needs them every single week, and the change also stops you from being similarly hassled every time you reboot your Mac.
The new prompt spotted by 9to5Mac reads: “[App name] is requesting to bypass the system private window picker and directly access your screen and audio. This will allow [app name] to record your screen and system audio, including personal or sensitive information that may be visible or audible.”
You’re then given a choice to ‘Allow For One Month’ (so you won’t see the pop-up again for a month), or you can elect to ‘Open System Settings,' whereupon you’ll be led to preferences for screen recording permissions.
The change seems to be exclusive to the macOS Sequoia 15.0 developer beta 6 and not the Sequoia 15.1 branch, which is the developer beta that finally has some Apple Intelligence features. We’ve seen the prompt in the Sequoia 15.0 public beta, too.
It appears there’s no way for developers to get around this monthly prompt, which affects various screenshot tools and, of course, apps where you share your screen (like Zoom or Slack).
That said, it may still be possible for developers to find a way to prevent the warning from popping up with their app – but it’s unclear what this might be. 9to5Mac even points out a possible fudge that devs could leverage (a ‘Persistent Content Capture’ entitlement), but Apple hasn’t provided any guidance on how this might work yet - or any guidance at all, for that matter.
While this is a step in the right direction in at least making the pop-up less regular, there should be a way for macOS users to permanently grant a specific app screen recording permissions. As the change is still being tested, we hope Apple might tweak the idea further or at least give developers some more clues on what they can do to potentially sidestep it.
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