From the perspective of the simple dialog, its a problem with the consumer app who calls the api to open the dialogue without context, without informing the user or obtaining user consent prior to doing so. Plenty of apps get this right, eg. Have a screen with buttons in the on-boarding flow that opens the dialogue next to the “maybe later” option, and use that page to explain or “sell” the benefits of enabling the permission.
Maybe the dialogs api should be treated like autoplaying videos with sound on the web, just disable the api if it is called outside of a click event handler, and let the consumer app break. That would be a breaking change for OSs tho. It wouldn’t prevent malicious UI patterns from triggering annoying permission prompts, but it would minimize accidental bad ux eg calling it in the main method on load
This also happened on iOS when they began to prompt users before apps could access the clipboard. I built an app that would handle the inbound redirect automatically if you had a relevant URL in your clipboard - did this for years with many users happy with the feature.
Then it started prompting users before allowing them to paste, and then the claims of privacy violations began to come in.
If instead I were able to specify what was happening in the prompt rather than iOS giving users an ambiguous statement, or even provide a detection pattern, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad.
I feel like this really harms security and privacy awareness by flooding the field with unimportant prompts/warnings to the degree that a real issue is similarly ignored because it is assumed to just be noise.
I think the visibility of these dialogs serves as a warning to the user--but they should do a better job directing the user's attention to where the threat is. If the user is getting annoyed at all these pop-ups, he should direct this annoyance at the developer who is (in all likelihood) asking for access to more of the user's computer than he needs.
The fact that there are so many popups should mean apps are reaching for access to your system way beyond what they should be. It shouldn't mean Apple needs to get rid of the pop-ups.
I get the pop-up semi-frequently from Chrome. I don't think complaining to Google has ever helped with anything; but then it's not like complaining to Apple has a better track record.
Yes, I don't know why the OS isn't tracking the pop-up by bundle id or anything. It's not like I changed my mind the last dozen times…
Then you have to require these permission controls to tell the app the user denied permission, and not just giving a valid but empty result. Some people on HN feel strongly that when you deny contacts permission to an app, the app should receive a list of dummy contacts. Without it a bad app can lock its UI and not do anything unless the permission is granted.
If you have an Extracare card, in some markets, you can self-unlock the locked display cabinets with the CVS app (because they have your identity via the ExtraCare card which adds inherent trust).
Ah, are you telling us that while people were outraged about rampant theft and pointing to all the locked-up merchandise as emblematic of the corporate response to rampant theft, even while there wasn't enough staff to unlock the cabinets... but the lockups are also a way to entice customers to install the app, sign up for an account, and enable Bluetooth all the time?
I mean, I didn't go to the worse version. Step right up to the little display, enter your phone number, smile for the camera, and the case unlocks magically!
Have a problem with pesky permissions dialogs from sandboxed apps? This unsandboxed unverified app that requests Accessibility permissions, to the rescue!
Well I don't have the problem it's trying to solve so I don't need to. But among people who install it, how many will? And remember to do it again before every upgrade?
So you're kinda looking for a "I want to allow this software to do whatever it wants - I accept all risks?" button? And with each new update you're re-evaluate?
"I want to allow the software to talk to devices on my local network", not "whatever it wants".
I've never had a case of this where the access was malicious, and devices on my network have security controls. For me this popup is exceptionally low value.
You can allow-list certain IP address ranges to not need the local network permission and I believe that should stop the popup from appearing (but I'm not sure). See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3179-u... for more information, TL;DR:
I don't know what Apple is looking for. The iPhone ships with a Weather app preinstalled, you allow it to your location so it can warn of severe weather, and several weeks later "OMG WEATHER APP IS USING YOUR LOCATION!!11!".
Same with MDM agents. Ours are installed automatically as part of the Apple Business Manager configuration, we manually grant them precise location in the background, and months later "HEY USER, WANNA BLOCK LOCATION FROM 'MDM SERVICE'?".
Edit: To avoid replying to the two following comments with the same reply, my gripe is not about the notification, that's a good thing; my gripe is with their implementation, which seems very in tune with Apple's way of complying with regulations. There are definitely many user-friendly ways to handle privacy compared to seemingly random notifications.
The first scenario is due to anti-trust complaints forcing Apple to treat their pre-installed apps identically to third-party ones. (Also why you can "delete" system apps.)
Okay, to me it reads like a lazy swipe. You seem to be aware of the power of AI to build you whatever you want, so why ask this question like this? It seems like you're just trying to tell people they should fully trust the software they install.
I'd rather something tell me exactly why this popped up in the first place, as every new OS version seems to introduce more triggers. I have apps that now pop this up when I quit, which doesn't make much sense.
Ideally, every API to call a function that provides the developer "dangerous" access to your system, should give the developer a text string argument to explain/justify to the user why it's needed. Then, instead of a confusing "Do you want this app to use Bluetooth?" pop-up with zero context, you let the developer convince the user.
Amazing. I'd LOVE for you to expand it, to also auto-dismiss "Foo.app would like to access data from other apps."
Adobe programs ask for this every time they start, and Claude Code randomly asks me this daily out of nowhere. It doesn't matter how many times I click "Don't Allow", it never gets remembered. (But of course if I ever mistakenly click "Allow" even once, that gets remembered for eternity and I never get asked again...)
side note but what is the consensus on figuring out whether small brew packages like this one are malicious?
I'm sure this one probably isn't, but I have no clue how I would know whether it is without reviewing the source code myself (or pointing an agent at it etc)
Even if they're not malicious, there's no guarantee that they won't become malicious in the future. Prefer living off the land, and install only the very essential extras.
It's so funny to read these, as if countless examples didn't prove that llms don't actually distinguish between your instructions and the data they read at your request.
Do you think a malicious repo author won't think of hiding a suitable prompt within?
took me about 30 seconds to find. there's tons of them. of course it's an arms race, the models get better the harnesses get better the attackers get better but again: for the model itself, your prompt and third party data it reads are the same thing (input). as long as it is true, the attack will always be possible.
Basically the question for any executable code (or even just any data) that you let on your machine and which did not go through independent vetting processes. The question you need to ask is if the benefit (getting rid of an annoying popup) is worth the risk of a distribution method that is trivial to compromise.
That's why I like small, open source projects like this one. I don't have to figure out if it's malicious. I just fork it, then ask claude to review the code, then run my own fork.
> Chromium browsers (Chrome, Brave, Edge, Island, Arc) copy their own app bundle into a random temp folder at launch so the code signature survives in-place updates. macOS keys the Local Network decision to that random path, so the next launch looks like a brand-new app.
OH DEAR GOD that explains so much other cursed behavior, including the "do you want to allow google chrome helper to show notifications" always reappearing. or teams. or anything that does autoupdates.
> Nothing on a typical Mac needs this permission except a printer or scanner utility, a media server, or a LAN-discovery tool, and those you answer once and they're done.
This is wrong. Browsers and media players need it because that is how multicast discovery for stuff like Chromecast works. Spotify, same thing. And Steam plus virtually all games with LAN multiplay for the same reason. Did I note already that Steam also has an autoupdater and so does Spotify and... argh.
Apple really needs to fix the very first point, preferably in a way that doesn't force app developers to ship a "helper" binary.
(Side note: it might even be the case that opening the file picker may be enough, if you got network-discoverable paths in your Finder Locations sidebar, but i'm too tired to test that one out...)
Even for chromecast and spotify I never want or use these features, and if I am not turning such a feature on I never want to be asked about a permission related to it, as a user. If I am turning a feature on or I am trying to use chromecast, THAT is the time to prompt me about it
The permission keying off of a temp folder feels so broken. I don't know whether Google / Chrome deserves the blame for the weird hack of running an app from a place the user never specified or Apple the OS for making such a hack necessary and not giving the permission system a way to understand the canonical user installed app as the source of the request.
This is the sort of classic MacOS situation that has mandated the use of Hammerspoon scripts and the like for more than a decade by now (this is not a sectarian point btw, Windows requires winutil just the same according to my optics)
Permissions consent prompts are broken. they are far too coarse, and out of context. The customer is forced to consent without knowing the scope or what will break.
A better experience would be an async consent screen, with placeholder content and calls to action until permission is granted.
For example, a network ping scanner could show placeholder host names & status until the user clicks to allow access.
The operating system could easily stub the sensitive APIs with placeholder content and a flag indicating the content is false. So even legacy apps could work.
Hmm another gripe of mine. Mac OS's vnc brings a popup that steals your focus when someone connects to the machine while you're physically in front of it.
I know it's well intentioned but I have this weird setup where I am almost constantly keeping vnc on from my laptop to my desktop. And the mbpro randomly wakes up to do whatever, even when not used, which reactivates the vnc connection, which pops up a warning on my desktop, which steals my focus.
Anyone knows a way to disable that? Possibly just for connections from a specific other machine.
Edit: as for this app, I think the OS only asks once for a new app? I don't remember being asked a second time even when denying it.
I could also whine a bit about "this app wants to access files on a removable volume" since my desktop has a thunderbolt ssd plugged in for extra space...
Yes. Thank you. This is such a simple thing that should be a part of the operating system, and in the ideal world it would be. This is the perfect problem for the LLM to solve, because the reason it does't exist in the system is a decision by some stupid PM at Apple, and not an actual system constraint.
It’s just a choice of which key to use. I don’t think it was some decision made with this intent, I think it is just the unexpected result of a decision.
this is exactly the type of app that makes me excited to see what the future will hold with ai. any regular joe or jane can now realistically solve many of their small annoyances with little effort and no experience.
(not saying this is ai or not, i have no idea, just speaking generally)
Yes! I got annoyed that I had to manually close old finder/preview windows, so I OSSd an app that closes any stale window. There have been commercial apps in this space a decade, but none worked how I wanted (per window not per app, config each app separately). So I just made it with Claude using some spare tokens at the end of the week. You can customize anything to be the way you like it now.
This particular item never been a problem for me because I incessantly close everything after I am done with it but it is super cool that we can ask AI to dig into the weeds for us now and fix our annoyances -- or even search repos online where someone else had and fixed this problem
Sometimes I am shocked by how blind Spotlight is. I will have something in my applications folder with a straightforward name -- say, Steam.app -- and it will keep picking the shortcut generated by CrossOver for the Windows version of Steam, that is nested inside a bunch of subfolders. Wtf? I ended up renaming the CrossOver version to WinSteam so it stops prefix-matching.
How do I know whether to say "Allow" or "Disallow" when it gives me no idea what either option actually means in concrete?
Maybe the dialogs api should be treated like autoplaying videos with sound on the web, just disable the api if it is called outside of a click event handler, and let the consumer app break. That would be a breaking change for OSs tho. It wouldn’t prevent malicious UI patterns from triggering annoying permission prompts, but it would minimize accidental bad ux eg calling it in the main method on load
Then it started prompting users before allowing them to paste, and then the claims of privacy violations began to come in.
If instead I were able to specify what was happening in the prompt rather than iOS giving users an ambiguous statement, or even provide a detection pattern, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad.
I feel like this really harms security and privacy awareness by flooding the field with unimportant prompts/warnings to the degree that a real issue is similarly ignored because it is assumed to just be noise.
No. They’re correct, there.
The app developer should not get to provide the message text for a prompt like that.
A secondary note somewhere in less than ten words, maybe, where it explicitly warns that the statement may be false.
In App Store apps, where these messages get human review, it could more safely be allowed.
The fact that there are so many popups should mean apps are reaching for access to your system way beyond what they should be. It shouldn't mean Apple needs to get rid of the pop-ups.
Yes, I don't know why the OS isn't tracking the pop-up by bundle id or anything. It's not like I changed my mind the last dozen times…
before that, facebook was stealing everything on your clipboard and send back to their server.
This dialog is what it take to stop them.
and it have the pattern detect you asked.
Which reminds me. Why does the CVS app need access to Bluetooth?
Then you have to require these permission controls to tell the app the user denied permission, and not just giving a valid but empty result. Some people on HN feel strongly that when you deny contacts permission to an app, the app should receive a list of dummy contacts. Without it a bad app can lock its UI and not do anything unless the permission is granted.
If you have an Extracare card, in some markets, you can self-unlock the locked display cabinets with the CVS app (because they have your identity via the ExtraCare card which adds inherent trust).
It's powered by the Invue smartlock platform. https://invue.com/smart-locks
https://abc7ny.com/post/cvs-testing-new-nyc-shoppers-open-ca...
https://youtu.be/zS9U3Gc832Y?si=BmVOHE6ahKLbw82c
Yes! This is part of the Flockification of everything.
https://indyme.com/solutions/freedom-case
The CV footage just adds that extra comfortable feeling, doesn't it?
https://indyme.com/hubfs/E6A61CF7-E252-4994-91E1-0FC0E88781F...
It's "freedom" for "honest shoppers"!
Yes.
> And with each new update you're re-evaluate?
No. Hope that helps.
I've never had a case of this where the access was malicious, and devices on my network have security controls. For me this popup is exceptionally low value.
Same with MDM agents. Ours are installed automatically as part of the Apple Business Manager configuration, we manually grant them precise location in the background, and months later "HEY USER, WANNA BLOCK LOCATION FROM 'MDM SERVICE'?".
Edit: To avoid replying to the two following comments with the same reply, my gripe is not about the notification, that's a good thing; my gripe is with their implementation, which seems very in tune with Apple's way of complying with regulations. There are definitely many user-friendly ways to handle privacy compared to seemingly random notifications.
Adobe programs ask for this every time they start, and Claude Code randomly asks me this daily out of nowhere. It doesn't matter how many times I click "Don't Allow", it never gets remembered. (But of course if I ever mistakenly click "Allow" even once, that gets remembered for eternity and I never get asked again...)
I'm sure this one probably isn't, but I have no clue how I would know whether it is without reviewing the source code myself (or pointing an agent at it etc)
Do you think a malicious repo author won't think of hiding a suitable prompt within?
Show me just one where a frontier model got prompt injected when checking if code if malicious.
FWIW I can do this, but I bet you can't.
took me about 30 seconds to find. there's tons of them. of course it's an arms race, the models get better the harnesses get better the attackers get better but again: for the model itself, your prompt and third party data it reads are the same thing (input). as long as it is true, the attack will always be possible.
OH DEAR GOD that explains so much other cursed behavior, including the "do you want to allow google chrome helper to show notifications" always reappearing. or teams. or anything that does autoupdates.
> Nothing on a typical Mac needs this permission except a printer or scanner utility, a media server, or a LAN-discovery tool, and those you answer once and they're done.
This is wrong. Browsers and media players need it because that is how multicast discovery for stuff like Chromecast works. Spotify, same thing. And Steam plus virtually all games with LAN multiplay for the same reason. Did I note already that Steam also has an autoupdater and so does Spotify and... argh.
Apple really needs to fix the very first point, preferably in a way that doesn't force app developers to ship a "helper" binary.
(Side note: it might even be the case that opening the file picker may be enough, if you got network-discoverable paths in your Finder Locations sidebar, but i'm too tired to test that one out...)
It’s weird they haven’t just made this a menu flag…
A better experience would be an async consent screen, with placeholder content and calls to action until permission is granted.
For example, a network ping scanner could show placeholder host names & status until the user clicks to allow access.
The operating system could easily stub the sensitive APIs with placeholder content and a flag indicating the content is false. So even legacy apps could work.
I know it's well intentioned but I have this weird setup where I am almost constantly keeping vnc on from my laptop to my desktop. And the mbpro randomly wakes up to do whatever, even when not used, which reactivates the vnc connection, which pops up a warning on my desktop, which steals my focus.
Anyone knows a way to disable that? Possibly just for connections from a specific other machine.
Edit: as for this app, I think the OS only asks once for a new app? I don't remember being asked a second time even when denying it.
I could also whine a bit about "this app wants to access files on a removable volume" since my desktop has a thunderbolt ssd plugged in for extra space...
You can see other people with tens of instances of the same app in the settings for this
(not saying this is ai or not, i have no idea, just speaking generally)
https://github.com/scosman/Squeegee
We're getting free from our software!