What does this option in Terminal do?
It seems to have no effect on anything.
Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityEssentially, this option prevents other applications (including things like TextExpander) from "listening in" on what you are typing. By preventing other background processes from recording or accessing your keystrokes, you are ensuring they cannot be logged or monitored, eg. by a simple keylogger, or another program running with normal permissions for potentially malicious purposes.
HISTCONTROL
to either ignorespace
or ignoreboth
. For zsh run setopt HIST_IGNORE_SPACE
. Then, once that's done, prefix the command you don't want in history with a space. E.g., ⎵blah --password secret_password
. Then open an issue with the program for not having a way to interactively enter your password in a hidden prompt.
– Captain Man
Jan 22 '20 at 18:23
There's a great answer about it on the Security Stackexchange
"Secure Keyboard Entry" maps to the
EnableSecureEventInput
function whose concept is described here. Basically, applications don't access the hardware themselves; they obtain events (e.g. about key strokes) from the operating system. Some elements in the OS decides what application gets what events, depending on its access rights and GUI state (there are details depending on which application is "in the foreground")....