The Screen Recording Permission, Explained Like You Are a Person
I know exactly what it looks like when a menu bar app asks for Screen Recording. It looks like the app wants to film you. If I hadn't built this thing myself, I'd side-eye it too, because that permission is the one macOS saves for apps that genuinely need to see the screen, and plenty of sketchy software has asked for it for plenty of sketchy reasons.
So let me tell you, in plain terms, what WriteAmp actually does with it. You shouldn't grant a permission you don't understand, and you shouldn't have to be a developer to understand this one.
Why autocomplete needs eyes at all
Here's the problem WriteAmp is trying to solve. To put a suggestion at your cursor, the app has to know where your cursor is. For most apps, that's easy, because the Mac tells WriteAmp exactly where the text field is through the Accessibility system. Native apps like Mail and Notes cooperate, and WriteAmp doesn't need anything else for them. The suggestion just appears, clean and simple.
Then there are the apps that draw their own text on a canvas instead of using the Mac's normal text system. Google Docs does this. Notion does this. Figma does this. And when an app draws its own text, it doesn't tell the Accessibility system where the cursor is. The Mac genuinely doesn't know. So WriteAmp has to look.
That look is the Screen Recording permission, and I named it honestly in the settings: I call it Screen Context, because what it actually does is read the context around your cursor, not record your life.
What it does, second by second
When you type in a canvas app and WriteAmp needs to place a suggestion, it takes a narrow picture of the area right around your text, runs it through Apple's on-device vision to figure out where the cursor actually is, and uses that to put the gray words in the right spot. Then it forgets the picture. It isn't saved. It isn't uploaded. It isn't added to a folder of screenshots for me to giggle at. It's processed in the moment, on your Mac, and discarded.
The honest limits
There are two things I won't dress up. First, this only happens in the canvas apps that need it. In Mail, in Notes, in Slack, in your normal native apps, WriteAmp never looks at the screen at all, because it doesn't have to. Second, when the permission is denied, WriteAmp doesn't try to sneak around it. It just quietly stops suggesting in those canvas apps, because guessing where a cursor is without looking is how you get suggestions in the wrong place, and a wrong suggestion is worse than none. I'd rather it stay quiet than be wrong.
That second point is a real trade, and I want to be straight about it. If you deny Screen Context, you lose autocomplete in Google Docs and Notion, and that might be exactly the trade you want to make. Some people type nothing sensitive in Docs. Some people just don't like the permission existing at all. Both are legitimate, and the app respects either choice. The privacy page has the whole written version if you want it without the legalese.
How to keep it on a short leash
You're not stuck with an all-or-nothing choice, and this is the part I wish more apps offered.
The way I think about it: this is a permission with a very specific job, and I've tried to make it as narrow as the Mac allows. It isn't recording your screen so I can watch. It's glancing at your cursor so a gray suggestion lands where your fingers already are. If that still feels like too much, the app works fine without it in the apps where you type the most, and the choice is yours either way.
The download is on the homepage if you want to see it in action, and the network ledger shows the only three times WriteAmp ever talks to the internet, none of which involve this permission.
Sources
- Apple documentation on screen capture permissions: what the permission covers at the system level
On macOS 26+ Macs, Apple Intelligence mode stays free even after the trial ends — you always keep a working path to suggestions.
Written by Amit Ashwini, who builds WriteAmp and runs its marketing. More: why the Tab key beats the chat box · mini, midi, and max compared · benchmark methodology.