Hi Apple, We are working on a general USB device management solution on macOS for enterprise security. Our goal is to enforce policy-based restrictions on USB devices, such as: For USB storage devices: block mount, read, or write access. For other peripherals (e.g., USB headsets or microphones, raspberry pi, etc): block usage entirely. We know in past, kernel extension would be the way to go, but as kext has been deprecated. And DriverKit is the new advertised framework. At first, DriverKit looked like the right direction. However, after reviewing the documentation more closely, we noticed that using DriverKit for USB requires specific entitlements: DriverKit USB Transport – VendorID DriverKit USB Transport – VendorID and ProductID This raises a challenge: if our solution is meant to cover all types of USB devices, we would theoretically need entitlements for every VendorID/ProductID in existence. My questions are: Is DriverKit actually the right framework for this kind of general-purpose USB device control? If not, what framework or mechanism should we be looking at for enforcing these kinds of policies? We also developed an Endpoint Security product, but so far we haven’t found a relevant Endpoint Security event type that would allow us to achieve this. Any guidance on the correct technical approach would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help.

first post here and this is kinda a long shot. I’m working on a custom keypad project for a young man with some mobility issues that unfortunately prevents gestrue and voice control as UI options. id like to see if I can pull track metadata via a Bluetooth connection into a custom keyboard with a small screen. I know hid doesn’t support this but I was hoping maybe the API for iOS’s blueprint remote app could be leveraged. I haven’t don’t much with Apple previousl. Usually Roku and Crestron implantations but I’m hoping to see if I can accomplish something with Apple, without needing to implement any IP connection.

Hello every one good day :) My project uses a mouse driver handling all events from the mouse produced by our company. In the past the driver is a kext, which implement acceleration by HIDPointerAccelerationTable, we prepare data in the driver's info.plist, while our app specifies a value to IOHIDSystem with key kIOHIDPointerAccelerationKey, the driver will call copyAccelerationTable() to lookup the HIDPointerAccelerationTable and return a value. In current DriverKit area, the process above is deprecated. Now I don't know to do. I've read some document: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hiddriverkit/iohidpointereventoptions/kiohidpointereventoptionsnoacceleration?changes=__7_8 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hiddriverkit/kiohidmouseaccelerationtypekey?changes=__7_8 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hiddriverkit/kiohidpointeraccelerationkey?changes=__7_8 but no any description in those articles. Please help!

Hello, As part of developing a DLP system, I need to block input devices upon detection of data leakage. Could you advise if it's possible to temporarily disable the built-in keyboard and camera? Thank you in advance, Pavel

I am aware the USB / HID devices can come and go, if you have a long running application that's what you want to monitor. But for a "one-shot" command-line tool for example, I would like to enumerate the devices present on a system at a certain point in time, interact with a subset of them (and this interaction can fail since the device may have been disconnected in-between enumerating and me creating the HIDDeviceClient), and then exit the application. It seems that HIDDeviceManager only allows monitoring an Async[Throwing]Stream which provides the initial devices matching the query but then continues to deliver updates, and I have no idea when this initial list is done. I could sleep for a while and then cancel the stream and see what was received up to then, but that seems like the wrong way to go about this, if I just want to know "which devices are connected", so I can maybe list them in a "usage" or help screen. Am I missing something?

Hi Everyone! I want to block the USB wired mouse from accessing my machine. Which framework is used to implement ? PS: I have already tried DriverKit Framework but it requires Apple's paid developer account. What will be alternative ?

Hi Apple support, We requested the 4 HID-related Entitlements back in December 2024. Similarly to another post here in the forums that was completely ignored, our request has NOT been processed for months. Mailing the support staff results in boilerplate email responses with no content, calling them results in a chat with very nice people who are unable to help since they can't seem to reach the entitlement team directly. Having to wait for MONTHS when dealing with one of the biggest and supposedly best companies in the world is beyond disappointing. Can anyone help? Is there anyone else that has had this same issue and that has found a work-around? I can share all necessary details. Thanks, Matteo

I'm working on a project to allow HID input from macOS to a connected iOS device. Are we prohibited from matching to a connected iPhone with DriverKit? I see the attribute kCDCDoNotMatchThisDevice for my iPhone is YES when looking at the IO registry and my dext does not initialize

Hi, I am working on a personal HIDDriverKit project. The documentation suggests that you do not need the entitlements from Apple to do local development - that all you need to do is turn of SIP, enable developer mode, and turn signing to "Sign to Run Locally". However, I have followed all of these steps, and am still running into the error that to build, I need to have a provisioning profile with the DriverKit (development) feature (MacOS 15.2 Xcode 16.2). Am I missing something here regarding the steps for local development? Does one need to request a development version of the entitlements even for local development? Do I need a paid developer account to do this? Thank-you in advance.

Is there a way to distinguish physical mouse/keyboard input from remote control mouse/keyboard input on Mac? Or even better, is there a way to detect if my Mac is being remotely controlled?

On my Apple Silicon MacMini, hidutil list does not list the connected Atmel-ICE (a hardware debugger from Microchip). On my Intel Mac, it does. And both run Sonoma. It is also enumerated as a HID device on the Linux and the Windows virtual machine running on the MacMini. So, this looks like a bug to me.

I am working on a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) project using the nRF52840 Development Kit (DK), which has been reconfigured to simulate an nRF52805 chip. The firmware is based on Nordic Semiconductor's ble_app_hids_keyboard example, with modifications to implement a BLE HID Gamepad. I am using the S113 SoftDevice and have successfully tested the functionality with Android devices. The gamepad is recognized as a HID device, and it works as expected on Android, verified using the hardwareTester website. However, when I connect the gamepad to an iPhone via BLE, the same hardwareTester website does not respond as it does on Android, indicating that the iPhone does not recognize the device as a gamepad. The BLE connection is established successfully, but it seems iOS does not interpret the HID report descriptor or the BLE HID service correctly. I suspect there might be compatibility issues with the HID descriptor or the GATT attributes for iOS-specific BLE HID requirements. I would like to have some help.

I have been working on a multi-platform multi-touch HID-standard digitizer clickpad device. The device uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as its connectivity transport and advertises HID over GATT. To date, I have the device working successfully on Windows 11 as a multi-touch, gesture-capable click pad with no custom driver or app on Windows. However, I have been having difficulty getting macOS to recognize and react to it as a HID-standard multi-touch click pad digitizer with either the standard Apple HID driver (AppleUserHIDEventDriver) or with a custom-coded driver extension (DEXT) modeled, based on the DTS stylus example and looking at the IOHIDFamily open source driver(s). The trackpad works with full-gesture support on Windows 11 and the descriptors seem to be compliant with the R23 Accessory Guidelines document, §15. With the standard, matching Apple AppleUserHIDEventDriver HID driver, when enumerating using stock-standard HID mouse descriptors, the device works fine on macOS 14.7 "Sonoma" as a relative pointer device with scroll wheel capability (two finger swipe generates a HID scroll report) and a single button. With the standard, matching Apple AppleUserHIDEventDriver HID driver, when enumerating using stock-standard HID digitizer click/touch pad descriptors (those same descriptors used successfully on Windows 11), the device does nothing. No button, no cursor, no gestures, nothing. Looking at ioreg -filtb, all of the key/value pairs for the driver match look correct. Because, even with the Apple open source IOHIDFamily drivers noted above, we could get little visibility into what might be going wrong, I wrote a custom DriverKit/HIDDriverKit driver extension (DEXT) (as noted above, based on the DTS HID stylus example and the open source IOHIDEventDriver. With that custom driver, I can get a single button click from the click pad to work by dispatching button events to dispatchRelativePointerEvent; however, when parsing, processing, and dispatching HID digitizer touch finger (that is, transducer) events via IOUserHIDEventService::dispatchDigitizerTouchEvent, nothing happens. If I log with: % sudo log stream --info --debug --predicate '(subsystem == "com.apple.iohid")' either using the standard AppleUserHIDEventDriver driver or our custom driver, we can see that our input events are tickling the IOHIDNXEventTranslatorSessionFilter HID event filter, so we know HID events are getting from the device into the macOS HID stack. This was further confirmed with the DTS Bluetooth PacketLogger app. Based on these events flowing in and hitting IOHIDNXEventTranslatorSessionFilter, using the standard AppleUserHIDEventDriver driver or our custom driver, clicks or click pad activity will either wake the display or system from sleep and activity will keep the display or system from going to sleep. In short, whether with the stock driver or our custom driver, HID input reports come in over Bluetooth and get processed successfully; however, nothing happens—no pointer movement or gesture recognition. STEPS TO REPRODUCE For the standard AppleUserHIDEventDriver: Pair the device with macOS 14.7 "Sonoma" using the Bluetooth menu. Confirm that it is paired / bonded / connected in the Bluetooth menu. Attempt to click or move one or more fingers on the touchpad surface. Nothing happens. For the our custom driver: Pair the device with macOS 14.7 "Sonoma" using the Bluetooth menu. Confirm that it is paired / bonded / connected in the Bluetooth menu. Attempt to click or move one or more fingers on the touchpad surface. Clicks are correctly registered. With transducer movement, regardless of the number of fingers, nothing happens.

I have selected an app to be hidden with Face ID, and it does not appear when i search for it. Nevertheless, when I move to the "Time of use" of the device, it is ranked among the apps that i have used, so you can realase that i currently have this app. I think this should be avoided.

Hello. Is it possible to control the iPhone 16 Camera Control Button via HID (Bluetooth/USB) command? Thanks