3

The newest version of MacOS introduced a privacy feature that will show a small orange dot in the top-right corner when an app is accessing your camera or microphone. In general, this is a very useful feature. However, there are scenarios, where I want to - at least temporarily - disable this. For example when I'm recording my screen for a video and I don't want that orange dot to pollute my entire video. I'm perfectly fine with the security implications, but it would be great if there was a way to disable this feature (at least temporarily) through some mechanism.

Is there any way to achieve this? I don't care if I have to sudo-script some stuff, I just want to get rid of this annoying orange dot while recording my screen. Unfortunately, the built-in screenshot app is not intelligent enough to hide this indicator for me.

Screenshot of a screen recording with a yellow/orange dot in the top right corner as privacy indicator that an app is accessing the microphone or camera

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    Well I don't know how to disable it, but I can erase it easily at any editing software by cloning nearby pixels. I know it's an extra annoying step, but it will be almost perfect, unless you are presenting very detailed photos underneath.
    – Mateus Ribeiro
    Commented Jan 10, 2022 at 21:10
  • 2
    Or else you could just crop the recording, nobody will miss the borders...
    – Mateus Ribeiro
    Commented Jan 10, 2022 at 21:11

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

As far as I know the only official way to disable this feature is for an app on your Mac to capture* the display which will prevent other software (including the operating system) from drawing anything to it.

That's how, for example, live event software should send video/etc to a projector. Unfortunately not all software captures the display - this should be reported to the developer as a bug.

As a temporary workaround until the developer makes that change, you can probably crop the video output. It's not ideal but is usually easily done with live event video systems.

(* Display Capture API: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coregraphics/1456259-cgdisplaycapture)

Improve this answer
-1

Unfortunately, as of Feb 2022, it appears there's no way to do this except through some hacks.

There is a hack that may allow you to hide it though, but it could break at any point. https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/RecordingIndicatorUtility

We've got computers doing AV work, and we're going to have to either postpone our upgrades to Monterey, or distribute this app to tons of computers and hope it works until Apple provides a way to disable it.

Improve this answer
6
  • And “just the tip” logic on the support page of this “tool’ - github.com/cormiertyshawn895/… are you not able to fix this in post or record a second screen? I must give the devs credit for explaining sealed system snapshots and documenting the installer ramifications of tampering with the OS.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 16:55
  • No, we're in live environments. If I were to do something that needed doing in post, I'd probably just use an older/other OS on a computer or a VM.
    – Justin
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 18:22
  • There’s a long heritage of having “live on air” signs visible but I understand if you don’t wish to tell your user base why this orange dot exists on some of your product.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 18:47
  • Live environment being like a show, concert, event, church service, presentation, v-dj, etc. For example, we're using an application that runs visuals via SMPTE-timecode to sync audio/visual/lighting content, which would require the mic-input to be active to receive that timecode.
    – Justin
    Commented Feb 14, 2022 at 16:19
  • @bmike mentioning you since this is such a common question. There is an official way for (the most commonly sited problem area) to disable the orange dot. It's not new either - it's from Mac OS X 10.0 and I'm sure there would have been an equivalent on classic MacOS. See my answer.
    – Abhi Beckert
    Commented Apr 20, 2022 at 1:05

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .