Explainer
Screen recording permission on macOS, and why it keeps asking
Screen & System Audio Recording
Allow the applications below to record the contents of your screen, even while using other applications.
Hindsight
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
Apple calls it Screen & System Audio Recording. Its current support guide places it in System Settings under Privacy & Security. Without the grant, a capture app cannot receive the screen or window content it asked for.
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.
Apple's ScreenCaptureKit documentation requires capture apps to request this permission. Hindsight detects the grant during onboarding and moves on without asking you to restart the app.
Why it keeps asking again
This is the part that feels like a malfunction. In our own testing and support cases, recent macOS releases periodically re-confirm screen recording permission even for an application that is still listed as allowed.
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
Always run the installed copy of a recorder. Launching one copy from a disk image and a second copy from Applications can leave two different application identities competing for one permission entry. Move the app to Applications, eject the disk image, then grant permission to the installed copy.
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.