Summary I am investigating a change in macOS 26.1 (Tahoe) where plain (non-bundled) executables that request screen recording access no longer appear under: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording This behavior differs from macOS Sequoia, where these executables did appear in the list and could be managed through the UI. Tahoe still prompts for permission and still allows the executable to capture the screen once permission is granted, but the executable never shows up in the UI list. This breaks user expectations and removes UI-based permission management. To confirm the behavior, I created a small reproduction project with both: a plain executable, and an identical executable packaged inside an .app bundle. Only the bundled version appears in System Settings. Observed Behaviour 1. Plain Executable (from my reproduction project) When running a plain executable that captures the screen: macOS displays the normal screen-recording permission prompt. Before granting permission: screenshots show only the desktop background. After granting permission: screenshots capture the full display. The executable does not appear under “Screen & System Audio Recording”. Even when permission is granted manually (e.g., dragging the executable into the pane), the executable still does not appear, which prevents the user from modifying or revoking the permission through the UI. If the executable is launched from inside another app (e.g., VS Code, Terminal), the parent app appears in the list instead, not the executable itself. 2. Bundled App Version (from the reproduction project) I packaged the same code into a simple .app bundle (ScreenCaptureApp.app). When running the app: The same permission prompt appears. Pre-permission screenshots show the desktop background. Post-permission screenshots capture the full display. The app does appear under “Screen & System Audio Recording”. This bundle uses the same underlying executable — the only difference is packaging. Hypothesis macOS 26.1 (Tahoe) appears to require app bundles for an item to be shown in the Screen Recording privacy UI. Plain executables: still request and receive permission, still function correctly after permission is granted, but do not appear in the System Settings list. This may be an intentional change, undocumented behavior, or a regression. Reproduction Project The reproduction project includes: screen_capture.go A simple Go program that captures screenshots in a loop. screen_capture_executable Plain executable built from the Go source. ScreenCaptureApp.app/ App bundle containing the same executable. build.sh Builds both the plain executable and the app bundle. Permission reset and TCC testing scripts. The project demonstrates the behavior consistently. Steps to Reproduce Plain Executable Build: ./build.sh Reset screen capture permissions: sudo tccutil reset ScreenCapture Run: ./screen_capture_executable Before granting: screenshots show desktop only. Grant permission when prompted. After granting: full screenshots. Executable does not appear in “Screen & System Audio Recording”. Bundled App Build (if not already built): ./build.sh Reset permissions (optional): sudo tccutil reset ScreenCapture Run: open ScreenCaptureApp.app Before granting: screenshots show desktop. After granting: full screenshots. App bundle appears in the System Settings list. Additional Check I also tested launching the plain executable as a child process of another executable, similar to how some software architectures work. Result: Permission prompt appears Permission can be granted Executable still does not appear in the UI, even though TCC tracks it internally → consistent with the plain-executable behaviour. This reinforces that only app bundles are listed. Questions for Apple Is the removal of plain executables from “Screen & System Audio Recording” an intentional change in macOS Tahoe? If so, does Apple now require all screen-recording capable binaries to be packaged as .app bundles for the UI to display them? Is there a supported method for making a plain executable (launched by a parent process) appear in the list? If this is not intentional, what is the recommended path for reporting this as a regression? Files Unfortunately, I have discovered the zip file that contains my reproduction project can't be directly uploaded here. Here is a Google Drive link instead: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sXsr3Q0g6_UzlOIL54P5wbS7yBkpMJ7A/view?usp=sharing Thank you for taking the time to review this. Any insight into whether this change is intentional or a regression would be very helpful.

I recently turned on the enhanced security options for my macOS app in Xcode 26.0.1 by adding the Enhanced Security capability in the Signing and Capabilities tab. Then, Xcode adds the following key-value sets (with some other key-values) to my app's entitlements file. <key>com.apple.security.hardened-process.enhanced-security-version</key> <integer>1</integer> <key>com.apple.security.hardened-process.platform-restrictions</key> <integer>2</integer> These values appear following the documentation about the enhanced security feature (Enabling enhanced security for your app) and the app works without any issues. However, when I submitted a new version to the Mac App Store, my submission was rejected, and I received the following message from the App Review team via the App Store Connect. Guideline 2.4.5(i) - Performance Your app incorrectly implements sandboxing, or it contains one or more entitlements with invalid values. Please review the included entitlements and sandboxing documentation and resolve this issue before resubmitting a new binary. Entitlement "com.apple.security.hardened-process.enhanced-security-version" value must be boolean and true. Entitlement "com.apple.security.hardened-process.platform-restrictions" value must be boolean and true. When I changed those values directly in the entitlements file based on this message, the app appears to still work. However, these settings are against the description in the documentation I mentioned above and against the settings Xcode inserted after changing the GUI setting view. So, my question is, which settings are actually correct to enable the Enhanced Security and the Additional Runtime Platform Restrictions?

Has anyone here encountered this? It's driving me crazy. It appears on launch. App Sandbox is enabled. The proper entitlement is selected (com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write) I believe this is causing an issue with app functionality for users on different machines. There is zero documentation across the internet on this problem. I am on macOS 26 beta. This error appears in both Xcode and Xcode-beta. Please help! Thank you, Logan

Hello Apple Developer Community, We have been experiencing a persistent notification issue in our application, Flowace, after updating to macOS 15 and above. The issue is affecting our customers but does not occur on our internal test machines. Issue Description When users share their screen using Flowace, they receive a repetitive system notification stating: "Flowace has accessed your screen and system audio XX times in the past 30 days. You can manage this in settings." This pop-up appears approximately every minute, even though screen sharing and audio access work correctly. This behavior was not present in macOS 15.1.1 or earlier versions and appears to be related to recent privacy enhancements in macOS. Impact on Users The frequent pop-ups disrupt workflows, making it difficult for users to focus while using screen-sharing features. No issues are detected in Privacy &amp; Security Settings, where Flowace has the necessary permissions. The issue is not reproducible on our internal test machines, making troubleshooting difficult. Our application is enterprise level and works all the time, so technically this pop only comes after a period of not using the app. Request for Assistance We would like to understand: Has anyone else encountered a similar issue in macOS 15+? Is there official Apple documentation explaining this new privacy behavior? Are there any interim fixes to suppress or manage these notifications? What are Apple's prospects regarding this feature in upcoming macOS updates? A demonstration of the issue can be seen in the following video: https://youtu.be/njA6mam_Bgw Any insights, workarounds, or recommendations would be highly appreciated! Thank you in advance for your help. Best, Anuj Patil Flowace Team

Hi, we were recently approved for the com.apple.developer.web-browser.public-key-credential entitlement and have added it to our app. It initially worked as expected for a couple of days, but then it stopped working. We're now seeing the same error as before adding the entitlement: Told not to present authorization sheet: Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServicesCore.AuthorizationError Code=1 "(null)" ASAuthorizationController credential request failed with error: Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError Code=1004 "(null)" Do you have any insights into what might be causing this issue? Thank you!

I have been trying to find a way to be able to sign some data with private key of an identity in login keychain without raising any prompts. I am able to do this with system keychain (obviously with correct permissions and checks) but not with login keychain. It always ends up asking user for their login password. Here is how the code looks, roughly, NSDictionary *query = @{ (__bridge id)kSecClass: (__bridge id)kSecClassIdentity, (__bridge id)kSecReturnRef: @YES, (__bridge id)kSecMatchLimit: (__bridge id)kSecMatchLimitAll }; CFTypeRef result = NULL; OSStatus status = SecItemCopyMatching((__bridge CFDictionaryRef)query, (CFTypeRef *)&amp;amp;result); NSArray *identities = ( NSArray *)result; SecIdentityRef identity = NULL; for (id _ident in identities) { // pick one as required } SecKeyRef privateKey = NULL; OSStatus status = SecIdentityCopyPrivateKey(identity, &amp;amp;privateKey); NSData *strData = [string dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; unsigned char hash[CC_SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH]; CC_SHA256(strData.bytes, (CC_LONG)strData.length, hash); NSData *digestData = [NSData dataWithBytes:hash length:CC_SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH]; CFErrorRef cfError = NULL; NSData *signature = (__bridge_transfer NSData *)SecKeyCreateSignature(privateKey, kSecKeyAlgorithmRSASignatureDigestPKCS1v15SHA256, (__bridge CFDataRef)digestData, &amp;amp;cfError); Above code raises these system logs in console default 08:44:52.781024+0000 securityd client is valid, proceeding default 08:44:52.781172+0000 securityd code requirement check failed (-67050), client is not Apple-signed default 08:44:52.781233+0000 securityd displaying keychain prompt for /Applications/Demo.app(81692) If the key is in login keychain, is there any way to do SecKeyCreateSignature without raising prompts? What does client is not Apple-signed mean? PS: Identities are pre-installed either manually or via some device management solution, the application is not installing them.

Hi everyone, I'm working on an app that stores multiple secrets in the Keychain, each protected with .userPresence. My goal is to authenticate the user once via FaceID/TouchID and then read multiple Keychain items without triggering subsequent prompts. I am reusing the same LAContext instance for these operations, and I have set: context.touchIDAuthenticationAllowableReuseDuration = LATouchIDAuthenticationMaximumAllowableReuseDuration However, I'm observing that every single SecItemCopyMatching call triggers a new FaceID/TouchID prompt, even if they happen within seconds of each other using the exact same context. Here is a simplified flow of what I'm doing: Create a LAContext. Set touchIDAuthenticationAllowableReuseDuration to max. Perform a query (SecItemCopyMatching) for Item A, passing [kSecUseAuthenticationContext: context]. Result: System prompts for FaceID. Success. Immediately perform a query (SecItemCopyMatching) for Item B, passing the same [kSecUseAuthenticationContext: context]. Result: System prompts for FaceID again. My question is: Does the .userPresence access control flag inherently force a new user interaction for every Keychain access, regardless of the LAContext reuse duration? Is allowableReuseDuration only applicable for LAContext.evaluatePolicy calls and not for SecItem queries? If so, is there a recommended pattern for "unlocking" a group of Keychain items with a single biometric prompt? Environment: iOS 17+, Swift. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I’m encountering an unexpected Keychain behavior in a production environment and would like to confirm whether this is expected or if I’m missing something. In my app, I store a deviceId in the Keychain based on the classic KeychainItemWrapper implementation. I extended it by explicitly setting: kSecAttrAccessible = kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock My understanding is that kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock should allow Keychain access while the app is running in the background, as long as the device has been unlocked at least once after reboot. However, after the app went live, I observed that when the app performs background execution (e.g., triggered by background tasks / silent push), Keychain read attempts intermittently fail with: errSecInteractionNotAllowed (-25308) This seems inconsistent with the documented behavior of kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock. Additional context: The issue never occurs in foreground. The issue does not appear on development devices. User devices are not freshly rebooted when this happens. The Keychain item is created successfully; only background reads fail. Setting the accessibility to kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlockThisDeviceOnly produces the same result. Questions: Under what circumstances can kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock still cause a -25308 error? Is there any known restriction when accessing Keychain while the app is running in background execution contexts? Could certain system states (Low Power Mode, Background App Refresh conditions, device lock state, etc.) cause Keychain reads to be blocked unexpectedly? Any insights or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

"I am attempting to read and write data to an Office Group Container, and I am consistently prompted with the "App would like to access data from other apps" alert. How can I configure the application or environment to suppress this repeated permission prompt?"

Is there any way for an iOS app to get a log of all Airdrop transfers originating in all apps on the iOS device e.g. from the last week?

Binary code is associated with the NSUserTrackingUsageDescription deleted at present, but in the revised App privacy will contain NSUserTrackingUsageDescription, I feel very confused, don't know should shouldn't solve.

Hi! We are developing an authentication plugin for macOS that integrates with the system's authentication flow. The plugin is designed to prompt the user for approval via a push notification in our app before allowing access. The plugin is added as the first mechanism in the authenticate rule, followed by the default builtin:authenticate as a fallback. When the system requests authentication (e.g., during screen unlock), our plugin successfully displays the custom UI and sends a push notification to the user's device. However, I've encountered the following issue: If the user does not approve the push notification within ~30 seconds, the system resets the screen lock (expected behavior). If the user approves the push notification within approximately 30 seconds but doesn’t start entering their password before the timeout expires, the system still resets the screen lock before they can enter their password, effectively canceling the session. What I've Tried: Attempted to imitate mouse movement after the push button was clicked to keep the session active. Created a display sleep prevention assertion using IOKit to prevent the screen from turning off. Used the caffeinate command to keep the display and system awake. Tried setting the result as allow for the authorization request and passing an empty password to prevent the display from turning off. I also checked the system logs when this issue occurred and found the following messages: ___loginwindow: -[LWScreenLock (Private) askForPasswordSecAgent] | localUser = >timeout loginwindow: -[LWScreenLock handleUnlockResult:] _block_invoke | ERROR: Unexpected _lockRequestedBy of:7 sleeping screen loginwindow: SleepDisplay | enter powerd: Process (loginwindow) is requesting display idle___ These messages suggest that the loginwindow process encounters a timeout condition, followed by the display entering sleep mode. Despite my attempts to prevent this behavior, the screen lock still resets prematurely. Questions: Is there a documented (or undocumented) system timeout for the entire authentication flow during screen unlock that I cannot override? Are there any strategies for pausing or extending the authentication timeout to allow for complex authentication flows like push notifications? Any guidance or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I am writing a MacOS app that uses the Apple crypto libraries to create, save, and use an RSA key pair. I am not using a Secure Enclave so that the private key can later the retrieved through the keychain. The problem I am running into is that on my and multiple other systems the creation and retrieval works fine. On a different system -- running MacOS 15.3 just like the working systems -- the SecKeyCreateRandomKey function appears to work fine and I get a key reference back, but on subsequent runs SecItemCopyMatching results in errSecItemNotFound. Why would it appear to save properly on some systems and not others? var error: Unmanaged<CFError>? let access = SecAccessControlCreateWithFlags(kCFAllocatorDefault, kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlockedThisDeviceOnly, .biometryAny, &error)! let tag = TAG.data(using: .utf8)! // com.example.myapp.rsakey let attributes: [String: Any] = [ kSecAttrKeyType as String: KEY_TYPE, // set to kSecAttrKeyTypeRSA kSecAttrKeySizeInBits as String: 3072, kSecPrivateKeyAttrs as String: [ kSecAttrIsPermanent as String: true, kSecAttrApplicationTag as String: tag, kSecAttrAccessControl as String: access, ], ] guard let newKey = SecKeyCreateRandomKey(attributes as CFDictionary, &error) else { throw error!.takeRetainedValue() as Error } return newKey This runs fine on both systems, getting a valid key reference that I can use. But then if I immediately try to pull the key, it works on my system but not the other. let query = [ kSecClass as String: kSecClassKey, kSecAttrApplicationTag as String: tag, kSecReturnRef as String: true, ] var item: CFTypeRef? let status = SecItemCopyMatching(query as CFDictionary, &item) let msg = SecCopyErrorMessageString(status, nil) if status == errSecItemNotFound { print("key not found") } guard status == errSecSuccess else { print("other retrieval error") } return item as! SecKey I've also tried a separate query using the secCall function from here (https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/710961) that gets ALL kSecClassKey items before and after the "create the key" function and it'll report the same amount of keys before and after on the bugged system. On the other machines where it works, it'll show one more key as expected. In the Signing & Capabilities section of the project config, I have Keychain Sharing set up with a group like com.example.myapp where my key uses a tag like com.example.myapp.rsakey. The entitlements file has an associated entry for Keychain Access Groups with value $(AppIdentifierPrefix)com.example.myapp.

In the macOS 14.0 SDK, environment and library constraints were introduced, which made defense against common attack vectors relatively simple (especially with the LightWeightCodeRequirements framework added in 14.4). Now, the application I'm working on must support macOS 13.0 too, so I was looking into alternatives that do work for those operating systems as well. What I found myself is that the SecCode/SecStaticCode APIs in the Security Framework do offer very similar fashion checks as the LightWeightCodeRequirements framework does: SecCodeCopySigningInformation can return values like signing identifier, team identifier, code requirement string and so on. SecStaticCodeCreateWithPath can return a SecStaticCode object to an executable/app bundle on the file system. Let's say, I would want to protect myself against launchd executable swap. From macOS 14.0 onward, I would use a Spawn Constraint for this, directly in the launchd.plist file. Before macOS 14.0, I would create a SecStaticCode object for the executable path found in the launchd.plist, and then examine its SecCodeCopySigningInformation dictionary. If the expectations are met, only then would I execute the launchd.plist-defined executable or connect to it via XPC. Are these two equivalent? If not, what are the differences?

I'm writing an app on macOS that stores passwords in the Keychain and later retrieves them using SecItemCopyMatching(). This works fine 90% of the time. However, occasionally, the call to SecItemCopyMatching() fails with errSecAuthFailed (-25293). When this occurs, simply restarting the app resolves the issue; otherwise, it will consistently fail with errSecAuthFailed. What I suspect is that the Keychain access permission has a time limitation for a process. This issue always seems to arise when I keep my app running for an extended period.

Hello, I recently installed an iOS app called SpyBuster by MacPaw. This app shows as list all my installed apps. How is this possible ? As a developer, I know this is prohibited by Apple - third party app to scan application workspace.

Hello, I'm an application developer related to Apple system extensions. I developed an endpoint security system extension that can run normally before the 14.x system. However, after I upgraded to 15.x, I found that when I uninstalled and reinstalled my system extension, although the system extension was installed successfully, a system warning box would pop up when I clicked enable in the Settings, indicating a failure. I conducted the following test. I reinstalled a brand-new MAC 15.x system. When I installed my applications, the system extensions could be installed successfully and enabled normally. However, when I uninstalled and reinstalled, my system extension couldn't be enabled properly and a system warning popped up as well. I tried disabling SIP and enabling System Extension Developers, but it still didn't work. When the system warning box pops up, I can see some error log information through the console application, including an error related to Failed to authorize right 'com.apple.system-extensions.admin' by client '/System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/SettingsSystemExtensionController.appex' [2256] for authorization created by '/System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/SettingsSystemExtensionController.appex' [2256] (3,0) (-60005) (engine 179) as shown in the screenshot. The same problem, mentioned in Cannot approve some extensions in MacOS Sequoia , but there is no solution

I'm seeing some odd behavior which may be a bug. I've broken it down to a least common denominator to reproduce it. But maybe I'm doing something wrong. I am opening a file read-write. I'm then mapping the file read-only and private: void* pointer = mmap(NULL, 17, PROT_READ, MAP_FILE | MAP_PRIVATE, fd, 0); I then unmap the memory and close the file. After the close, eslogger shows me this: {"close":{"modified":false,[...],"was_mapped_writable":false}} Which makes sense. I then change the mmap statement to: void* pointer = mmap(NULL, 17, PROT_READ, MAP_FILE | MAP_SHARED, fd, 0); I run the new code and and the close looks like: {"close":{"modified":false, [....], "was_mapped_writable":true}} Which also makes sense. I then run the original again (ie, with MAP_PRIVATE vs. MAP_SHARED) and the close looks like: {"close":{"modified":false,"was_mapped_writable":true,[...]} Which doesn't appear to be correct. Now if I just open and close the file (again, read-write) and don't mmap anything the close still shows: {"close":{ [...], "was_mapped_writable":true,"modified":false}} And the same is true if I open the file read-only. It will remain that way until I delete the file. If I recreate the file and try again, everything is good until I map it MAP_SHARED. I tried this with macOS 13.6.7 and macOS 15.0.1.

We recently deployed Attestation on our application, and for a majority of the 40,000 users it works well. We have about six customers who are failing attestation. In digging through debug logs, we're seeing this error "iOS assertion verification failed. Unauthorized access attempted." We're assuming that the UUID is blocked somehow on Apple side but we're stumped as to why. We had a customer come in and we could look at the phone, and best we can tell it's just a generic phone with no jailbroken or any malicious apps. How can we determine if the UUID is blocked?

I have a small command-line app I've been using for years to process files. I have it run by an Automator script, so that I can drop files onto it. It stopped working this morning. At first, I could still run the app from the command line, without Automator. But then after I recompiled the app, now I cannot even do that. When I run it, it's saying 'zsh: killed' followed by my app's path. What is that? The app does run if I run it from Xcode. How do I fix this?