With macOS Sequoia this fall, using apps that need access to screen recording permissions will become a little bit more tedious. Apple is rolling out a change that will require you to give explicit permission on a weekly basis to these types of apps, and every time you reboot your Mac.
While I understand Apple’s desire to make it clear that you’ve given apps permission to record your screen, this seems like a nuisance. You have to click “Allow For One Week” each week for every app that’s actively capturing or streaming screen images. As 9to5Mac says, that’s going to get pretty tedious.
And if an app isn’t using Sequoia’s new “screen recording picker”, you’ll see this very technically worded warning. I’m not sure how non-technical users will respond to this:
Of course, the reason I’m grousing about this is because Default Folder X is affected. In some situations, DFX captures an image of an Open or Save dialog and displays it on top of the real file dialog as a “curtain” to hide what it’s doing while it manipulates the dialog. It doesn’t store or transmit the images – it just takes a screenshot of the file dialog, pops it up on the screen to obscure the dialog while it twiddles a menu, then throws away the screenshot.
Now Sequoia is throwing up scary weekly reminders about it recording “personal or sensitive information”. Sigh. Assuming that this new Sequoia “feature” is here to stay, I feel the only workable solution is to remove the screen captured façade and just put up a blank window to hide what Default Folder X is doing. This is … ugly. Here’s a quick illustration:
Here’s what Default Folder X is doing. Notice the menu popping up after opening “Empty Folder”:
Here’s what it currently looks like with a captured image overlayed to hide the menu activity. As intended, you don’t see anything at all:
Here’s what it looks like without screen recording, using a blank window to hide activity instead. There’s an unpleasant white flash:
I realize it’s not the end of the world – having that blank window flicker on the screen doesn’t change the functionality of Default Folder X. It’s just sloppy looking and aesthetically grating.
How you can take action
If you’d like to help out – and save yourself weekly warnings about the apps you use that capture screen images – please use Feedback Assistant to submit a bug about this to Apple. At the very least, they could add a “Don’t remind me again” checkbox to that warning alert and save us all from being pestered every week.
The bottom line
If Sequoia’s repeated reminders and dire warnings about privacy intrusion are here to stay, I don’t see any way forward except to eliminate the use of captured screen images. This reduces the quality and functionality of my software, but if the warnings are enough to put off some users, removing the dependent features is the only way to stop them from scaring people.
And just for the record, the use of captured screen images isn’t something new. Default Folder X and other applications have used this kind of trick for years to hide unpleasant side effects, clean up graphical glitches, or get information they can only get by looking at the screen. We’ve just come to a point where Apple feels it’s necessary to tell you about it on the off chance that some app is spying on you – which Default Folder X isn’t doing, but I do understand the potential danger.
The third beta build of Default Folder X 6.1 is available, adding support for the Warp terminal app and fixing several bugs that occurred in the previous beta (and in Default Folder X 6.0.8).
The other notable change is that this build won’t trigger Sequoia’s screen recording reminders nearly as often. Sequoia puts these up several times a day if an app is capturing screen images, which Default Folder X does as part of its normal functioning. Contrary to what this alert implies, DFX isn’t doing anything nefarious, just making its manipulations of Open and Save dialogs less jarring. The details are here. I’ve reduced the frequency of the reminders by abandoning Default Folder X’s automatic detection of dark / light mode in individual Open and Save dialogs, which required capturing an image from the screen.
To explain a bit: Some apps (including QuickTime Player, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Rogue Amoeba Fission) let you change their appearance separately from the system-wide light / dark mode setting. There’s no generic way for another app like Default Folder X to tell which appearance they’re using other than taking a visual snapshot of one of the app’s file dialogs and checking to see whether it’s dark or light. I know that may sound stupid, but that’s the way macOS works – and honestly, for most normal, stand-alone applications this capability isn’t necessary, so I can understand why Apple doesn’t provide any sort of API to query an app’s appearance mode.
Anyway, without that information, Default Folder X may end up with the wrong light / dark mode for its toolbar around a file dialog, as well as for some of the controls within it – like this:
It doesn’t change the functionality that you get from Default Folder X, but it’s a bit jarring – and ugly. So, that’s the tradeoff – to stop Sequoia from whining at you every day, Default Folder X has to be less capable (and yes, I’ve filed a bug with Apple, but unless they get a lot of complaints I don’t think they’ll change this “feature” in Sequoia).
Default Folder X attempts to detect these situations using a different, application-specific method, and will currently do the right thing with the above-mentioned apps (QuickTime, Affinity apps and Fission). If you encounter this mismatch in other apps, let me know at DefaultFolderX@stclairsoft.com and I’ll do my best to find a way to detect the appearance for that app.
Grumble.
At any rate, a full change history and download links for Default Folder X 6.1b3 are available on the Beta Testing page.
While it’s been slow going, I’ve gotten a few new features put together in the ongoing development of version 6 of Default Folder X. I’m sharing two here because I’m very happy to have gotten them up and running, as I personally find them really useful.
Expanded Filename Editing Field
It seems like such a minor thing, but when you’re saving something like a web page that has a long name, it’s maddening that Save As dialogs have such a tiny edit box for the filename. The long name runs past the end of the edit field and you have to click and drag or use the arrow keys to get to the rest of it if you want to make any changes.
While it required way more juggling than I expected, Default Folder X 6 expands the filename field to a usable size.
Keyboard-based Access to Recent and Favorite Items
I’m personally a very keyboard-biased user. I’d rather use shortcuts and type than take my hand off the keyboard to click around with the mouse. As a result, Default Folder X has always had the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to Favorites and to access recently used items. Up until now, however, that didn’t include just typing to select exactly what you wanted. In version 6, that’ll be an option:
I’ve used a “Sublime Text-style” selection method, where fuzzy matching gives you results that include file, folder and application names that contain the letters you’ve typed, even if there are some missing in between. It also favors capital letters and the first letters of words.
You’ll see that the top match in the image above when typing “roc” is “ReactiveObjC” because of the capitalized R, O and C in the correct order, with “ProcessController.m” further down the list even though it contains “roc” in lowercase. I’m still tweaking this, but I find the results pretty quick and intuitive when looking for something (though granted, the results lower down in the list tend to appear almost random until you look hard at them).
As a developer, the danger I see with this feature is that people will want me to reproduce all kinds of options from similar keyboard-based utilities like LaunchBar and Alfred and I’m not sure how far to go with that. This isn’t meant to replace those (I’m a long-time LaunchBar user myself), but some additional tweaks could be nice…
If you want to help test…
While these (and other) features are still in development and thus a bit rough around the edges, I’d welcome input if you’ve got some time to try them out and provide thoughtful feedback. Email DefaultFolderX@stclairsoft.com if you’re interested.
Brent Simmons has a great post over at inessential.com on the genius of Apple events. As one of the people behind the ground-breaking Userland Frontier, Brent is uniquely qualified to espouse on the significance and power of Apple events. Frontier, and later AppleScript, leveraged Apple events to let Mac users tie together applications to make workflows that got real things done, even when no single application existed that would do what they needed. I used Frontier for years to automate the back-end of my software business – it was invaluable.
As Brent says:
Picture Jane in her office. She gets an email from Bob every month with the latest WidgetX numbers. With that email in front of her, she double-clicks a script (or chooses one from a scripts menu)… [which] updates and saves (on a shared folder) a Keynote presentation with the new numbers.
This used to take hours, and it was prone to errors. Now it takes a minute or less — and it’s error-free
With Marzipan reportedly coming in macOS 10.15 this year, Apple is further de-emphasizing the cooperative nature of macOS apps, and will most likely not support Apple events in the “iPad apps adapted to run on the Mac” context of Marzipan. Again, from Brent:
What happens to Jane if Mail is a Marzipan app that doesn’t respond to Apple events?
Indeed.
And as Brent says (and as I detailed in an earlier post), many Mac apps use Apple events to directly integrate with other applications. They tie everything together for you, taking your Mac experience from ‘good’ to ‘great’. Just in my own apps, Default Folder X communicates this way with the Finder, Path Finder, ForkLift, Terminal and iTerm2 to give you seamless access to folders no matter where you need them. App Tamer uses Apple events to make sure it doesn’t interrupt iTunes and Spotify when they’re streaming music for you. And there are numerous other examples throughout the Mac ecosystem (and probably on your Mac right now).
Losing Apple event support in Mac applications would be a bigger loss than a lot of people realize – and one I’m not sure Apple is completely cognizant of. My hope is that there’s someone back there minding the proverbial store, but my feeling is that Apple is rushing headlong to open up macOS to UIKit applications to get more apps on the Mac, without regard for some important underpinnings.
I’m not a huge podcast junkie – my listening tends to ebb and flow as demands on my time change. However, Mac Geek Gab is one that always entertains, has great tips and information for getting the most out of your Mac, and helps with the weird little issues that inevitably crop up. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they’re big fans of St. Clair Software’s products, too – it’s nice to hear my name in lights every once in a while 🙂
So, as I was reminded by Dave’s mention of Jettison in their 13th Anniversary episode a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been tuning in for years now and think some of St. Clair Software’s customers might really enjoy and benefit from the podcast. So there you are – go give them a listen, support their sponsors, and learn some new tips and tricks!
Michael Tsai and Jason Snell brought it to my attention that Default Folder is almost 30 years old. I guess that makes me a stubborn old man at this point…
While Jettison and HistoryHound are still supported and sold on the St. Clair Software website, I’ve pulled them from the Mac App Store. The versions that were in the Mac App Store were older revisions, and it just didn’t make business sense to rearchitect the apps to meet Apple’s current requirements for approval so they could be kept up-to-date.
For both applications, complying with Apple’s sandboxing and feature constraints to get them approved for sale would have required significant rewrites. And in Jettison’s case, it would also require that buyers download a separate helper app to enable its full functionality. I realize that some people will be put off or inconvenienced by the fact that these apps are no longer in the Mac App Store – my apologies if you’re one of those folks, but it just doesn’t make sense for Jettison and HistoryHound.
Without going into a full-on rant about the Mac App Store (I could ramble on for days), let’s just say that while the Mac App Store is convenient for consumers, it doesn’t really serve the needs of some developers. Much has been written about it already (here, here, here, here and here, for example) so I won’t rehash it all – and despite years of “constructive criticism” from developers, Apple hasn’t fixed some major problems.
I hope you’ll continue to purchase our applications, as well as those from other independent developers selling outside the Mac App Store. While it’s a little less convenient than the Mac App Store, it allows us to bring you the best software we can, and also gives us the opportunity to foster a two-way relationship with you – both of which really matter to us.
Wait. Who?Sal Soghoian is Product Manager of Automation Technologies at Apple. That basically means he has been the motivating force behind AppleScript, Automator, application scriptability and the technologies that underly them. He’s been doing it for the last 20 years, and I don’t think most Mac users understand how important his influence has been to the platform we use and love. He’ll be leaving Apple on December 1, as his position has been “eliminated for business reasons.”
While I’ve met Sal several times, I don’t know him on a personal level. I’ve seen him speak numerous times, and like many long-time Mac developers, have benefited from his passion and consistent evangelism of system-level scriptability.
Why do I care? Indeed – why do we care about this? Well, let’s rewind a bit and set some groundwork for why Sal’s contributions matter so much.
Interoperability – from Copy/Paste to AppleScript. We all take copy and paste for granted – of course I can copy an image out of Photoshop and paste it into Mail, right? Well, it didn’t always work so easily – the Mac was the first major platform that standardized that by providing system-level support for standard image types and an extensible way to move them between applications. The key was that it was natively supported by the system, so developers could add it to their apps and it worked the same way, with the same basic data formats, in all applications. You could copy and paste between any applications.
Like copy and paste, in 1993 Apple added system-level support for scripting. Instead of every developer inventing their own custom scripting language that only worked in their application, Apple created AppleScript – and more crucially, AppleEvents beneath it that provided a rich way to send commands and data from one application to another. Many applications have scripting dictionaries built into them, letting you, or any application, send commands to do useful stuff.
Anyone can create simple or hugely complicated AppleScripts to do all sorts of things – from changing the format of all image files in a folder to automating email handling to batch-processing audio and video clips for movies. You can use all the best-of-breed tools on the Mac and string them into workflows that meet your specific needs. That’s always been one of the Mac’s big advantages – you can combine applications to accomplish more than any of the individual apps can do themselves. Apple’s Automator application even tried to make this accessible to everyone – with varying levels of success, depending on who you talk to.
But I don’t use AppleScript. So I don’t care, right? You may not directly use AppleScript, but many applications use AppleScript or AppleEvents in lots of little ways. iTunes, for example, lets you pause, play, go forward and backward a track, change playlists, add properties to songs, and a zillion other things. Those little iTunes controller apps that live in your menubar or dock? They use AppleScript to talk to iTunes. The ones that add lyrics to the currently playing song at the push of a button? Yup, AppleScript. Applications that grab the current page from your browser? AppleScript. The “contact us” button in an app that automatically creates an email in Mail with a subject and the To: address filled in? AppleScript. There’s probably something on your Mac that uses AppleScript or AppleEvents, even though you’re not aware of it.
So where does Sal come in? Sal is the guy at Apple who has kept this whole vision alive. He prodded developers to add AppleScript capabilities to their applications. He kept system-level scripting a priority – or at least on the radar – at Apple. He spoke at WWDC and numerous other conferences, showing how powerful the technology was. He explained to developers how a little work on their end could yield huge benefits for scripting-aware users.
My fear is that with Sal’s departure, Apple’s waning interest in scripting, and application interoperability in general, will be gone for good.
Losing interoperability. So if system-level scriptability disappears, what do we lose? For starters, it makes it harder for one application to talk to another or to use another application’s capabilities. Those iTunes controllers wouldn’t be able to talk to iTunes. My own product, Default Folder X, tracks your recently-used folders and then lets you go back to one of them in the Finder, Path Finder or Terminal. The latter two wouldn’t be possible (or would be much harder) without AppleScript. And when someone tweeted me that they wanted to use iTerm2 instead of Terminal, I could add that in 10 minutes because iTerm2 supports AppleScript.
Yes, those are little things, but sometimes they’re the little things that separate an acceptable application from an awesome one. I’ve always felt that the interoperability between Mac applications was one of the things that distinguished the Mac from other platforms like Windows. Even when you can get the same applications on both OS’s, everything is just tied together better on the Mac. I hope that doesn’t change.
Oh, and if you do use AppleScript? Yeah, this sucks even more.
Summary: Bogdan Popescu, the developer of Dash (one of the most awesome programmer’s reference tools ever), contacted Apple to convert his personal developer account into a company account. Apple started the process, then disabled his personal account and revoked his permission to sell apps on the App Store. It looks like another capricious and supremely unhelpful App Store move from Apple. Thanks guys – you make it so much fun to develop for your platforms.
I probably shouldn’t be writing this – I’ve certainly got better things to do with my time – but heck, this really gets to me. I’ve gotten several emails over the past week that are similar to this one:
I am fairly sure you sneakily intended to try to get me to have to BUY a new key for DF 5. Please note I used the word SNEAKILY.
Sorry, it won’t work, I won’t be using it. Maybe that is what you intended…
His email was in response to a mailing announcing Default Folder X 5, which said:
… And because you purchased an earlier version, you can upgrade to Default Folder X 5 for only $14.95 USD.
and gave the recipient a link to a web page that says:
If you bought a license before June 1, 2015, there is a $14.95 upgrade fee for version 5.
and which has a download button that shows you a page that says:
Before you install version 5, we’d like to make sure you know that you’ll be asked to pay a $14.95 upgrade fee if you purchased Default Folder X before June 1, 2015. We don’t want anyone to feel that they weren’t told about this before trying the new version.
So now – “SNEAKILY”? Really? I’ve tried to be as up-front about this as possible. Yes, I am asking you to buy a new key for Default Folder X 5. No doubt about that. It’s written everywhere. And based on the feedback I’ve gotten from the vast majority of folks out there, that’s entirely reasonable. I certainly think it is. The last time I charged for a Default Folder X upgrade was 8 years ago. Long enough that people had started sending me money out of the blue because they thought I should have charged them something by now for reliably supporting and upgrading the product for that long.
So listen folks. I’M NOT OUT TO GET YOU! Yes, I’m asking you to pay for software that saves you time and frustration on a daily basis. I’m not trying to sneak that by you. I’m not trying to dupe you. I’m not playing you for a fool. I’M RUNNING A BUSINESS. And yes, if you don’t think Default Folder X is worth as much as a meal at Denny’s, you certainly don’t have to buy the upgrade. It’s your choice – you can vote with your wallet.
Now to everyone else who’s sent me notes of congratulations, thanks, appreciation, and generally just been awesome – THANK YOU SO MUCH! You’re one of the big reasons that owning and running a small software company is so rewarding. I really appreciate your input and feedback.
