I was happy to get Acorn 8 a go but all the security approvals needing to record the screen just to select colors in an image editor and also something about about getting a notification from System Settings about it having installed something make me wonder why?
I haven’t seen this for an image editor before. I don’t think Pixelmator does that, or is it because it’s an app on the App Store that these security actions aren’t needed? Will it be the same for Acorn if using the App Store version? It sure doesn’t feel very user friendly having to deal with those things for such an app.
But maybe that’s the way things are now with the latest security precautions in macOS Sequoia.
This is just the way things are on macOS these days. All apps (except Apple apps, I believe) will show a warning when you try to “record” the screen the first time (and every new update on the app after that, unfortunately, as well). Pixelmator included, if it samples outside the image.
I’m seriously considering a preference to turn that feature off, though. It’s been great for the past 18+ years, but the warnings are super annoying.
I don’t know what the other warning was - maybe it was from Acorn’s QuickLook extensions (these are the extensions that let the Finder show image thumbnails on the Acorn files, as well as for QuickLook to be able to show Acorn images). Again, this will happen for all apps.
macOS is getting pretty locked down these days, much to the annoyance of both users and developers. I understand why, but … it’s going a bit overboard.
The eyedropper tool in Pixelmator only selects within the document itself so it doesn’t need permission to “record the screen” since the app is only picking up color from something it already “owns”. The exception is the one in the color panel, and that one gets a pass on this because it is provided by Apple as part of the OS and gets special treatment.
The Affinity products (at least as of 2.x - not sure with the new one as I won’t use that due to the licensing terms) also have an eyedropper that can sample from anywhere on the screen, and those do show the same warning that Acorn does when you try to use the eyedropper for the first time, requiring that you grant it permission to see colors from parts of the screen that are not “owned” by the app. If you don’t grant permission you will only be able to sample from within the app.
