Accessibility Permissions for Development in macOS and XCode

Question

Is there a way to give an app I am developing in XCode accessibility permissions by default during development. The idea is that I could hit the run key and test the new code without having to jump through the hoops in the settings. For deployment obviously it wouldn't work, but for development is there a way to basically whitelist the app?

Answer 1

EDIT: This is a new method I've found/created that is working and has the added benefit of prompting the user first too, improving the onboarding experience of your app. The original method (which I've left at the bottom of this post) still prompted for accessibility on each new build of the app unfortunately.

I had to get this working in my macOS app and had another idea and way to approach it, given the user needs to action it anyway, I just have the app present the required dialogue on each run and during the app build, I run a script to clear the existing permissions.

For reference, see v1.3.0 of my Auto Clicker macOS app, specifically:

• Services/PermissionsService.swift (whole class)
• Init/AppDelegate.swift (line 21)
• Init/AutoClickerApp.swift (line 32 & 40)
• auto-clicker.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj (line 435)

The links are links to the tagged version, so should never change or break. There is quite a bit of code, I'll try to summarise here.

Firstly, I created a new class to manage permissions related functionality to keep things contextual:

//
//  PermissionsService.swift
//  auto-clicker
//
//  Created by Ben on 10/04/2022.
//

import Cocoa

final class PermissionsService: ObservableObject {
    // Store the active trust state of the app.
    @Published var isTrusted: Bool = AXIsProcessTrusted()

    // Poll the accessibility state every 1 second to check
    //  and update the trust status.
    func pollAccessibilityPrivileges() {
        DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 1.0) {
            self.isTrusted = AXIsProcessTrusted()

            if !self.isTrusted {
                self.pollAccessibilityPrivileges()
            }
        }
    }

    // Request accessibility permissions, this should prompt
    //  macOS to open and present the required dialogue open
    //  to the correct page for the user to just hit the add 
    //  button.
    static func acquireAccessibilityPrivileges() {
        let options: NSDictionary = [kAXTrustedCheckOptionPrompt.takeRetainedValue() as NSString: true]
        let enabled = AXIsProcessTrustedWithOptions(options)
    }
}

Then, I added the following to my AppDelegate (baring in mind this was in Swift UI):

//
//  AppDelegate.swift
//  auto-clicker
//
//  Created by Ben on 30/03/2022.
//

import Foundation
import Cocoa

final class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
    // When the application finishes launching, request the
    //  accessibility permissions from the service class we
    //  made earlier.
    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ notification: Notification) {
        PermissionsService.acquireAccessibilityPrivileges()
    }
}

Then finally, in our Swift UI app init, lets add some UI feedback to the user that we are waiting for permissions and listen to that isTrusted published property we setup earlier in the permissions service class that gets polled every second to unlock the UI when the user has granted the required permissions:

//
//  AutoClickerApp.swift
//  auto-clicker
//
//  Created by Ben on 12/05/2021.
//

import Foundation
import SwiftUI
import Defaults

@main
struct AutoClickerApp: App {
    // Create an instance of the permissions service class that we
    //  can observe for the trusted state change.
    @StateObject private var permissionsService = PermissionsService()

    var body: some Scene {
        // Wait for trust permissions being granted from the user,
        //  displaying a blocking permissions view telling the user
        //  what to do and then presenting the main application view
        //  automatically when the required trust permissions are granted.
        WindowGroup {
            if self.permissionsService.isTrusted {
                MainView()
            } else {
                PermissionsView()
            }
            .onAppear(perform: self.permissionsService.pollAccessibilityPrivileges)
        }
    }
}

You can see the blocking view I made in the app above, Views/Main/PermissionsView.swift.

Then in order to automatically clear the permissions during the app build, I added a new build script to the project that runs the following against /bin/sh:

tccutil reset Accessibility $PRODUCT_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER

As seen in auto-clicker.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj (line 435).

This means I'll be prompted with the system dialogue on each app build to just press the + button and add the app.

Unfortunately this is the most frictionless way I've found to develop the app with these permissions being required.

---

Outdated answer:

Found a way to do this after some trial and error, navigating through Xcode's (>11, currently 13) new build system.

With Xcode open and having it as the foreground app (so it takes over the menu bar with its menu items), do the following:

1. From the menu bar, select 'Xcode'
2. If your project doesn't yet have a workspace, click 'Save as Workspace...' near the bottom of the list and save the Workspace alongside your *.xcodeproj so they should be in the same directory. From now on you'll open your project via the new *.xcworkspace Workspace instead of your *.xcodeproj Project.
3. From the menu bar, select 'Xcode' again
4. Click 'Workspace Settings...' near the bottom of the list
5. Under 'Derived Data' select 'Workspace-relative Location', if you want to customise the path do so now
6. Click 'Done' in the bottom right

This puts the build location of our *.app binary within the project so its easy to find, along with also allowing us to check the change into source control as we now have the Workspace settings stored in the *.xcworkspace file.

Next we need to now point the permissions at the above build binaries location, so:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click 'Security & Privacy'
3. Click the padlock in the bottom right to make changes
4. Select 'Accessibility' from the left side list
5. Click the plus button at the bottom left of the list and find the *.app file to add it to the list that we put within the project directory, this should be something like $PROJECT_DIR/DerivedData/$PROJECT/Build/Products/Debug/*.app
6. Click the checkbox to the left of the app to check it if its not already checked
7. Restart the app

Any builds should now have the relevant permissions.

Just to note though, this will overwrite the permissions of any archived/prod builds as the app names and binaries are the same. They are easily added back though, just delete the permission for the build app and instead point it back at your prod app, usually in /Applications.