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Many people have written about the repeated screen recording permission prompts in macOS 15 and I mostly agree with the negative coverage.

There is some potentially good news coming in 15.1, with the promise of even less frequent prompts if you regularly use an app. That seems like a reasonable compromise, and is probably where Apple’s iteration on this feature will end. But I also liked Matthias Gansrigler’s recent idea about allowing apps to request default permissions.

The whole post is worth a read, but the gist of it is that if the entire purpose of an app is dependent on a privilege, developers should be able to request that privilege during App Review.

I always want my screenshot tool to have screen recording privileges, my voice memos app to have microphone privileges, and my calendar helper app to have access to my calendars. I’m sure you have examples you can think of, too, where even that initial prompt for the primary permission is unnecessary as it’s the entire purpose of the app.

I’d still like to be able to go to settings and turn off those default permissions, but having them on by default would be great at reducing permission prompt overload.

You might think that this idea is overkill, but two things happen as we’re shown more and more security prompts. The decisions we make lose meaning and we get conditioned to accept everything. Second, for apps where the permission is truly important to the app’s operation, if the user does deny the privilege then they are either left with a useless app or a messy trip through the settings app. Yes, apps can choose to deep link people into Settings, but even so, it can turn a pleasant on boarding experience into a chore.

The downside, of course, is consistency. If the operating system stops asking for user permission for some apps, will people assume every app can do everything again? Default permissions could be listed on App Store listings. However, most people don’t read that kind of information.

I don’t expect Apple to make major changes to the permission prompt system, especially with the tweak to screen recording permission frequency coming in macOS 15.1. That said, it’s an interesting discussion point, and I hope they keep iterating on how it works, and that ideas like this are considered.

Dave Verwer  

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And finally...

I was left with a series of “What if’s” ❤️