MacOS Sequoia Shipped With the Annoying Screen Recording Permissions Dialog ⇥ developer.apple.com

I was proved wrong after I speculated last month the new monthly permissions prompt for legacy screen recording might not be in the released build of MacOS Sequoia:

I think it is possible MacOS 15.0 ships without this dialog. In part, that is because its text — “requesting to bypass the system window picker” — is technical and abstruse, written with seemingly little care for average user comprehension. I also think that could be true because it is what happened last year with MacOS 14.0. […]

It turns out this prompt, awkward language and all, made it into the public release.

Andrew Cunningham, in his review for Ars Technica, thinks this is a good idea in isolation:

The recurring screen recording permissions request is especially justifiable — it’s good for macOS to check in periodically about this kind of potentially data-scraping app, so attackers or domestic abusers can’t just install one once, click through the initial permissions requests, and have access for as long as you have the computer.

However, he dislikes the cumulative “constant barrage of requests and notifications [which] is an element of confusion and fatigue and of users clicking through boxes just to make them go away”.

Jason Snell, of Six Colors, is also frustrated:

In the name of making the Mac a safer place to be, right now Apple’s also making it a worse place to be. This is not an acceptable trade-off. It’s incumbent on Apple to make the Mac safer without compromising usability.

Put bluntly, macOS Sequoia fails this test.

In the latest beta release of MacOS 15.1, Apple added a new device management key, forceBypassScreenCaptureAlert, to override the monthly permissions request. (Thanks to Josh Calvetti.) However, my understanding is this cannot be used by more general users; it is only for managed devices.

Update: Added more context to my summary of Cunningham’s position.