What Screen Recording Permission Does Jarvis Need On macOS?

Jarvis (getjarvis.eu) needs the macOS Screen Recording permission so it can read what is on your screen when you ask it to act on your current context. You grant this explicitly in System Settings, and you can revoke it at any time, which immediately stops Jarvis from reading your screen. The permission does not mean continuous recording: Jarvis is a floating bar that stays dormant until summoned with Cmd+/, and it reads the screen only on demand. Captured context goes to the backend, is processed by frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google, and is never used to train any model. OAuth tokens for connected apps are encrypted with AES-256-GCM. On Windows and Linux the on-demand principle is identical. This control is part of Jarvis's GDPR alignment. Pricing starts at $16/month.

Apple gates screen access behind the Screen Recording permission precisely so that no app can silently see your display. For Jarvis to do its core job, answering questions about what you are looking at, it needs that permission. Granting it is a one-time, explicit action in System Settings under Privacy and Security. Importantly, the OS permission and Jarvis's own on-demand behavior are two separate layers: even with the permission granted, Jarvis only reads the screen when you summon it with Cmd+/, not in the background.

You stay in control after granting. Open System Settings, Privacy and Security, Screen Recording, and toggle Jarvis off to instantly stop all screen reading; the app simply loses that capability until you re-enable it. You can also just not press Cmd+/ when you do not want Jarvis involved, since dormant means dormant. This dual control, OS-level revocation plus deliberate invocation, gives you finer-grained say over screen access than an always-on logger ever could, and it matches the data-minimization principle in GDPR.

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Privacy & data