Explainer
Screen recording permission on macOS, and why it keeps asking
If you have installed anything on a Mac that records the screen, you have met this dialog. It reappears, it seems to forget your answer, and it is the single most common thing people write to us about. None of it is a bug, and the behaviour makes more sense once you know what the permission is actually protecting.
What the permission is
It is called Screen & System Audio Recording, and it lives in System Settings under Privacy & Security. Without it, macOS will not let an application see the contents of any window it does not own. An app without the permission does not get a degraded picture or a black rectangle with a warning: it gets nothing.
The reason it is guarded this heavily is that screen contents are the most revealing thing on a computer. Everything else you protect with a password is on screen at some point after you have typed it — your email, your bank, your messages, your password manager while it is unlocked. A screen recorder is, by definition, an app that can watch all of it.
Granting it
- Open System Settings, then Privacy & Security.
- Choose Screen & System Audio Recording.
- Turn the switch on for the app.
Older versions of macOS required you to quit and reopen the app afterwards. That is no longer necessary in general, and a well-built app notices the grant the moment it happens — Hindsight detects it during onboarding and moves on without asking you to restart anything.
Why it keeps asking again
This is the part that feels like a malfunction and is not. Recent versions of macOS re-confirm screen recording permission periodically, even for applications you have already approved. Apple's reasoning is reasonable enough: a permission granted once, two years ago, to an app you no longer remember installing, is not really informed consent.
So the prompt returning is expected. Clicking Allow keeps the existing grant — you are not re-granting from scratch and nothing is reset.
What is not expected is the prompt appearing on every single launch. That usually means the permission entry has become inconsistent, often after an app was moved, replaced by an update, or restored from a backup. The fix is to rebuild the entry:
- Go to Privacy & Security, then Screen & System Audio Recording.
- Select the app and remove it with the minus button.
- Launch the app again and grant the permission when it asks.
Why a recorder must be in /Applications
Permission is tied to the app's identity and its location. Running a recorder from your Downloads folder, or from the disk image it arrived on, produces exactly the symptoms above: permission that appears to be granted but does not persist. Drag the app to Applications first, then grant.
How to tell it is actually working
A screen recorder that lacks permission usually cannot tell you so in an obvious way, because from its point of view the capture simply produces nothing. Look for a signal in the app itself rather than trusting the settings window: Hindsight dims its menu bar mark when the permission is missing, and the buffer readout in the sidebar stays at zero rather than counting up. If the readout is climbing, capture is genuinely running.
What the permission does not grant
Worth being precise, because "it can see my screen" sounds alarming and the scope is narrower than it sounds.
- Microphone is separate. A different permission, asked for separately, and only if an app records your voice.
- Camera is separate. Screen recording permission grants no camera access at all.
- It does not imply network access. An app can be permitted to see your screen and still never send anything anywhere. Hindsight's App Store build makes no network requests whatsoever, and you can revoke the permission at any time to stop capture immediately.
If you want the specifics of what a recorder on your machine can reach, ours are written out on the security page.