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aperantos

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 18, 2008
172
187
London, U.K.
When Apple killed off the old extensions I wrote my own App Extension to maintain keyword based searching and thoughI had to enabled developer extensions when I loaded Safari I was okay with that.

But having replaced my MacBook and upgraded several versions of macOS, I and no getting fed up with Safari turning off the developer extensions option every 24 hours. So before I waste money on a developer certificate I have a couple questions if anyone can help.

Is there a way to add an app extension button that will provide an interface but without access to the web page so it does not need to request permission? My extension intercepts search requests so only needs permission for the search engines programmed into Safari, so only needs permission to access those, but sometimes I want to make changes while on other sites to add a keyword.

That matters because even after paying I would still need to put my extension on the App Store to be able to use it myself, as anything installed outside the App Store still needs to use the self-disabling developer extensions option. So I will need to make it as user friendly as possible, and so would not like it to have permission to every website when that is not need.

But would Apple even approve such an extension? They used to be a number of options before Apple closed down the old extension format but I ended up writing my own as no replacements existed.

It is bad enough needing to buy a developer certificate just to use my own app on my own computer, and it is already pushing things to have to pay for it, but I cannot afford to do so if it is not going to be accepted so all for nothing.

If my description of the extension is not clear, the screenshot should make sense of what it does.


Screenshot 2025-05-20 at 2.55.11 PM.png
 
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