you granted it last month. it is asking again.

what macOS 26 changed about the screen recording permission

macOS Sequoia introduced periodic re-authorisation for screen recording, and macOS 26 kept it. what changed in 26 is the dialog itself and the name of the setting behind it — which is why most of what you will read about this is now slightly wrong.

this is one of a set of quieter changes in the same release: what macOS 26 changed for menu bar apps

weekly, then monthly: what actually shipped

in the early Sequoia betas the interval was a week, and the prompt also reappeared on every reboot. that produced enough public criticism from Mac developers that Apple changed it before release: from beta 6 onwards the interval became roughly a month and the per-reboot prompt stopped.

so if you have read that this happens weekly, that page was written during the betas and never updated. one thing to keep straight: Apple has never documented the interval anywhere. «about a month» is what was reported at the time and what the behaviour looks like, not a published number.

the change from weekly to monthly was reported while it was happening: 9to5Mac, macOS Sequoia will now prompt you monthly

what the dialog says in macOS 26

here is the part nearly every page still gets wrong, including an earlier version of this one. the Sequoia dialog offered a button labelled «allow for one month». on macOS 26 that button is gone. the alert now offers «allow» and «open System Settings», and nothing else.

this is checkable rather than a matter of opinion: the whole string set for that alert lives in one file inside ReplayKit, and on 26.6.2 it contains exactly four strings — a title, a body, «Allow» and «Open System Settings». there is no month button in any of the forty-two languages the file ships with. the expiry itself is still there, so you will still be asked again; you just no longer get told how long you are agreeing to.

why macOS asks for screen recording and not for the rest

screen recording is the broadest thing you can grant on a Mac in one respect: it does not read a file or control an app, it reads whatever is on your display. that includes the password manager you just opened, the message that arrived while you were away, and the document you are told not to photograph.

it is also the permission most likely to be granted once, years ago, to something you have forgotten you installed. every other privacy setting protects a specific resource — the microphone, the camera, your contacts — and there is an indicator when those are in use. a process reading the screen looks like nothing at all.

the expiry is a blunt fix for that: it forces the list to be re-confirmed, so a tool you stopped using in 2023 loses its access without you having to remember it exists. annoying by design, and the annoyance is the mechanism.

the neighbouring permission is broader still and works differently — it does not expire at all: why a Mac app asks for accessibility permission

where to see which apps have screen recording permission

the setting moved in macOS 26, or rather it was renamed and split. it used to be «Screen Recording». it is now «Screen & System Audio Recording», and there is a second, separate list next to it called «System Audio Recording Only» for apps that capture sound without the picture.

1. open System Settings, then Privacy & Security in the sidebar.
2. scroll to Screen & System Audio Recording. everything listed there can read your display right now.
3. turn off anything you do not recognise or no longer use. the app has to be quit and reopened before the change takes effect — macOS says so in the dialog it shows you.
4. check System Audio Recording Only while you are there. it is a shorter list and it is easy to miss, because it did not exist before macOS 26.

Apple's own page for the panel, under its new name: Apple Support, control access to screen and system audio recording on Mac

doing this once, deliberately, is worth more than clicking through the prompt every month. the prompt only asks about the one app in front of you; the list shows you everything at once, including the things that have not asked for anything in two years because you never open them.

there is no supported way to make the permission permanent. workarounds circulate and they involve disabling parts of the privacy system — you would be turning off the check for every app to silence one dialog, which is a much worse trade than it sounds.

if something in that list belongs to an app you already deleted, it was not fully removed: uninstall an app with its leftovers

when macOS keeps asking more often than once a month

if a particular app asks every few days, that is a different problem from the one above, and the answer is almost never on your side of the screen.

re-signed builds and fresh downloads

the approval is recorded against a specific build of a specific app, not against its name. change the thing that identifies that build and the approval no longer matches, so macOS asks again as if it had never met the app.

that happens most often with apps under active development or on a fast release channel — a new build every few days, each one signed anew. it also happens if you run the app from a different location each time, or if you downloaded a copy that was re-signed by somebody other than the developer. an app that keeps asking is usually telling you something about how it is being built and shipped, and it is a fair thing to ask the developer about.

the same signing machinery explains a difference people notice elsewhere: the App Store version versus the one from the site

which tools ask for screen recording and which never do

the useful question when an app asks at all is whether the feature actually needs to read the screen. a screenshot tool does. text recognition from a screen region does. a picker that only needs one pixel's colour does not.

macOS provides narrow APIs for some of these jobs — the system colour loupe returns a single colour and nothing else — and an app built on one of them never appears in that list at all. it is not a matter of asking politely; there is nothing to ask for.

hop's colour picker works that way and asks for no screen recording permission: the colour picker

which is why grabbing a hex code needs no permission dialog anywhere in the process: get the hex code of a colour on screen

text recognition is the honest opposite. it reads a region of pixels you frame, which is exactly what the permission covers, so it asks for it and shows up in the list like everything else. there is no clever way around that, and a tool claiming otherwise is telling you something about itself.

the module that does need it, and says so: text recognition

so when you are choosing between two tools that do the same thing, «which permissions does it ask for» is a real differentiator and not a technicality. an eyedropper that wants to record your display is asking for a great deal more than the job requires — and it is the one that will interrupt you again next month.

frequently asked questions

why does macOS keep asking for screen recording permission?

since Sequoia the permission expires and has to be re-confirmed periodically. it is Apple's policy, not a malfunction in the app that is asking.

is it weekly or monthly?

roughly monthly. weekly was the behaviour in early Sequoia betas and was changed before release after public criticism. Apple has never published the exact interval.

where is the screen recording setting in macOS 26?

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording. it was called simply «Screen Recording» before macOS 26, and there is now a separate «System Audio Recording Only» list beside it.

what happened to the «allow for one month» button?

it is gone in macOS 26. the alert now offers «allow» and «open System Settings» only. the permission still expires — you are just no longer told for how long you are granting it.

can i stop the prompt permanently?

not in a supported way. the workarounds disable parts of the privacy system for everything, which is a much worse trade than a dialog once a month.

why does one app ask far more often than the others?

the approval is tied to a specific build. an app that is re-signed or updated every few days, or run from a changing location, keeps failing that match and asks again.

what can an app with this permission see?

everything on your display, including other apps' windows — a password manager, private messages, confidential documents. that breadth is why it expires.

do all screenshot and ocr tools need it?

anything that reads a region of pixels does. tools built on narrower system APIs — a colour loupe that returns a single value, for instance — do not, and never show up in the list.