Microphone — required
To hear you, and that is the whole of it. The audio is turned into text on this Mac — by a Whisper model you downloaded, or by Apple’s speech model that ships inside macOS — and it is never uploaded anywhere.
macOS asks with its own prompt the first time. If you say no, YapScribe cannot hear you, and nothing else about the app is affected — but there is nothing else it can do without this.
Accessibility — required
Two things need it, and neither works without it: noticing the Shift-key triggers while you are working in another app, and typing the finished text back into that app.
macOS has no way for an app to grant itself Accessibility, so YapScribe opens System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility and waits for you to turn the switch on. It starts working the moment you do — no relaunch.
Which trigger starts a dictation is a setting: both Shift keys together (the default), a double-tap of Shift, or a shortcut you record yourself. None of the three asks for Input Monitoring — the Shift gestures are read through the Accessibility permission YapScribe already needs, and a recorded shortcut is registered with macOS directly.
Screen Recording — optional
This is the one that makes YapScribe different. Before it transcribes, it takes a single screenshot of the display you are working on and reads the text in it on your Mac, so the names and jargon in front of you come out spelled right. macOS calls that Screen Recording even though nothing is recorded.
The screenshot is held in memory for one dictation and then released. It is never written to disk and it never leaves your Mac — see the Trust ledger for what does and does not travel in each set-up.
Saying no costs you less than you would think
Nothing breaks. YapScribe falls back to reading the text of the window you are typing in, which is less than a screenshot sees but a great deal better than nothing. You can change your mind in Settings at any time.
It takes effect at the next launch
macOS hands screen access to an app when the app starts up, so an app that is already running keeps reading “not allowed” however enthusiastically you just said yes. Quit YapScribe and open it again. There is nothing else to do, and the app says so on the card rather than showing you a tick that would be wrong.
macOS will ask you again
Recent versions of macOS re-ask for screen-recording permission periodically, on their own schedule, for every app that holds it. That is macOS, not YapScribe. If you miss one of those prompts, nothing breaks — the menu bar item reads Screen Context (window text only), which is the app telling you which of the two sources is actually running rather than implying the better one.
The macOS 26 options ask for nothing more
Apple Speech and Apple Intelligence polish — the two extras on macOS 26 and later — add no permission to this list. Neither framework has an authorisation call to make: the older speech API asked your consent because it could send your audio to Apple’s servers, and these do not. Turning either on puts up no dialog, and never turning them on costs you no permission either.
Taking a permission back
System Settings › Privacy & Security, pick Microphone, Accessibility or Screen Recording, and switch YapScribe off.
- Without Accessibility, the Shift-key triggers stop doing anything and YapScribe can no longer type into your apps.
- Without the microphone, it cannot hear you.
- Without Screen Recording, it reads window text instead.
Nothing is lost by revoking any of them, and granting one again takes effect immediately — except Screen Recording, which waits for the next launch as above.
Password fields are refused, whatever you granted
Dictation is off in password fields, and off while any app holds secure input — Terminal and password managers turn that on Mac-wide, so there are moments when nothing on screen looks like a password field and dictation still stops.
In both cases nothing is typed, and nothing is put on your clipboard either.