Apple Tweaks Screen Recording App Permissions to Decrease Popup Frequency in macOS Sequoia 15.1

[TriBruin]

ScreenCaptureKit is available since macOS 12.3
The content sharing picker is available since macOS 14.

The system window picker essentially is a way for apps to ask users to pick a window first, then OS presents the content to the app. Since its the OS who is asking the user which window to share, app doesn't need to ask for a screen recording permission as it is granted automatically once the does choose a window.

Apps do not opt to use this new mechanism needs to enumerate the windows themselves, and here lies the problem, users need to first allow screen recording access to the app before app can present to users which window to choose from.

It's very similar to how photos pickers are implemented in iOS and Android.
If allowed by user via a propmt, the OS provides all photo access (or limited photo access in recent iOS/Android versions) to the app, and app draws itself a picker.
However, OS also provides a native photo picker that an app can invoke, the user select the photo, and OS provides those photos to the app, without app ever needing to request permission to read photos. Basically no apps use this, they would rather have access to your all photos, than requesting you to pick a photo and present to them.

Screen capture is a very sensitive permission. Apple wants to discourage usage of previous not so privacy friendly way of sharing your screen. It's not about annoying you, devs can update their app to make their product better but they chose not to.

Which works for standard “screen sharing” apps, where the user is specifically choosing to share their screen or a specific window. However, it breaks for apps that use screen recording for other purposes. For example Bartender or any application that needs to do color matching.

I get where Apple is coming from here, and I don’t necessarily disagree. However, Apple needs to tread carefully. There is a real chance for dialog box fatigue and, instead of making users more aware of what applications are doing, users become numb to all the dialog boxes and just start hitting “Allow” without any extra thought (or hit deny and then can’t understand why their application stopped working.)

 

[mainmac]

Still no way to manage this properly for enterprise management tools. As an end user I greatly appreciate Apple's emphasis on privacy and security... but in the business world computers are tools. Security and compliance requirements don't always allow users to have the ability to manage their own machines, and even if they do have it they need to have security/management tools in place. PPPC needs to be updated to allow central authorization of screen recording and prompting.

A central way for enterprise to either 1) halt the use of the computer should the user not give permission or 2) always notify the user with popups, but without the ability to disable the screen recording (if it's an enterprise owned & managed device). I could see those two options being acceptable, but anyone sitting at an Apple computer has to expect to be notified if it's being recorded, regardless of who owns it. Those limitations should be acceptable in any business environment, should be required in fact.

 

[mainmac]

Still not good enough.

The team responsible need to be reassigned. This is my ****ing computer, not yours.

It's still an Apple computer and anybody using it has to expect a certain level of security, regardless who owns it. This minimal level of protection against potential abuse should really be acceptable if not expected by any honest owner.