Which macOS permissions Recordist asks for, and why
Recordist asks for as little as it can. Here is the full list, and what each permission is for.
Required to record
Microphone. Your side of the call. Without it, recordings contain only the other participants.
Screen & System Audio Recording. On macOS 14.6 and later, capturing the audio coming out of your machine (the other participants) falls under this permission, and that sound is all Recordist uses it for. It never captures screen contents and never takes screenshots. If you also grant full Screen Recording, Recordist reads window titles with it, as described under Optional. The name of the permission is Apple’s, not ours.
Optional
Calendars. Read-only, to title meetings, know the attendees and build Prep Briefs. Decline it and everything still works; meetings are titled from the transcript instead.
Notifications. To tell you when notes are ready. Decline it and you check the app instead.
Screen Recording or Accessibility. To read the window titles of the app or browser using the microphone, so the meeting gets its name. Either one works, and Settings → Detection has a button for each. Recordist reads the titles only. You can turn window titles off in the same place; the app still reads a browser’s window titles when the browser starts using the microphone, to tell which meeting site is open.
Never requested
Contacts, Location, Camera, Photos, Full Disk Access, Automation, Input Monitoring. If a version of Recordist ever asks for one of these, treat it as a bug and tell us.
Granting and re-granting
First launch walks you through both required permissions. If a recording is silent on one channel, check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone and → Screen & System Audio Recording. Grants survive updates; if a permission looks on but a channel is still silent, toggle it off and on.
The Chrome extension
It requests access to the supported meeting sites, to the Recordist app on your own machine, to storage and alarms, and to Chrome’s tabs permission, which it uses to find meeting tabs and notice when one closes. Its scripts run only on the meeting sites. It pairs with the app through a one-time code shown in the app.