Yet another Hacker News

Show HN: Auto Dismiss Mac OS "Allow <app> to find devices on local networks?"

41 points johncassil 1 hour ago 34 comments

This popup has been a constant gripe of mine for years. I almost NEVER want to allow this permission and there is no system setting to disable it globally and prevent the popup from interrupting your typing, etc. This tiny swift app I built will autoclose it in 1/4th of a second and leave behind a little notification that it did so. Would love to hear feedback!

poszlem 1 hour ago | parent

Yes. Thank you. This is such a simple thing that should be a part of the operating system, and in the ideal world it would be. This is the perfect problem for the LLM to solve, because the reason it does't exist in the system is a decision by some stupid PM at Apple, and not an actual system constraint.

klodolph 59 minutes ago | parent

It’s just a choice of which key to use. I don’t think it was some decision made with this intent, I think it is just the unexpected result of a decision.

johncassil 35 minutes ago | parent

I maintain that Steve Jobs would have taken the engineers to task over this poor UX.

browningstreet 1 hour ago | parent

Thanks. It’s macOS' own cookie banner and dick bar.

It’s weird they haven’t just made this a menu flag…

LoganDark 1 hour ago | parent

"One Swift file" except it's two Swift files

hmokiguess 47 minutes ago | parent

One bunch of Swift

johncassil 37 minutes ago | parent

oof, it was originally one, forgot about the refactor lol

HughParry 57 minutes ago | parent

side note but what is the consensus on figuring out whether small brew packages like this one are malicious?

I'm sure this one probably isn't, but I have no clue how I would know whether it is without reviewing the source code myself (or pointing an agent at it etc)

sigmoid10 53 minutes ago | parent

Basically the question for any executable code (or even just any data) that you let on your machine and which did not go through independent vetting processes. The question you need to ask is if the benefit (getting rid of an annoying popup) is worth the risk of a distribution method that is trivial to compromise.

hmokiguess 48 minutes ago | parent

so we are back at choosing where we draw the line and you picked this one to get us going

johncassil 36 minutes ago | parent

Good question -- I have been pointing claude at repos for security reviews before I install stuff now for exactly this reason.

ShinyLeftPad 22 minutes ago | parent

It's so funny to read these, as if countless examples didn't prove that llms don't actually distinguish between your instructions and the data they read at your request.

Do you think a malicious repo author won't think of hiding a suitable prompt within?

NavinF 13 minutes ago | parent

> countless examples

Show me just one where a frontier model got prompt injected when checking if code if malicious.

FWIW I can do this, but I bet you can't.

ShinyLeftPad 8 minutes ago | parent

The fact that you think it's just about the model betrays your understanding.

Here's how it was done via a harness: https://www.promptarmor.com/resources/google-antigravity-exf...

took me about 30 seconds to find. there's tons of them. of course it's an arms race, the models get better the attackers get better but again fundamentally: the model itself does NOT distinguish between your prompt and data it reads.

poszlem 31 minutes ago | parent

That's why I like small, open source projects like this one. I don't have to figure out if it's malicious. I just fork it, then ask claude to review the code, then run my own fork.

ASalazarMX 10 minutes ago | parent

Even if they're not malicious, there's no guarantee that they won't become malicious in the future. Prefer living off the land, and install only the very essential extras.

john_strinlai 56 minutes ago | parent

this is exactly the type of app that makes me excited to see what the future will hold with ai. any regular joe or jane can now realistically solve many of their small annoyances with little effort and no experience.

(not saying this is ai or not, i have no idea, just speaking generally)

scosman 52 minutes ago | parent

Yes! I got annoyed that I had to manually close old finder/preview windows, so I OSSd an app that closes any stale window. There have been commercial apps in this space a decade, but none worked how I wanted (per window not per app, config each app separately). So I just made it with Claude using some spare tokens at the end of the week. You can customize anything to be the way you like it now.

https://github.com/scosman/Squeegee

johncassil 33 minutes ago | parent

This particular item never been a problem for me because I incessantly close everything after I am done with it but it is super cool that we can ask AI to dig into the weeds for us now and fix our annoyances -- or even search repos online where someone else had and fixed this problem

eastbound 33 minutes ago | parent

The first app I will do is Spotlight. Its insistence on finding everything across the universe except applications is tiring.

We're getting free from our software!

nottorp 43 minutes ago | parent

Hmm another gripe of mine. Mac OS's vnc brings a popup that steals your focus when someone connects to the machine while you're physically in front of it.

I know it's well intentioned but I have this weird setup where I am almost constantly keeping vnc on from my laptop to my desktop. And the mbpro randomly wakes up to do whatever, even when not used, which reactivates the vnc connection, which pops up a warning on my desktop, which steals my focus.

Anyone knows a way to disable that? Possibly just for connections from a specific other machine.

Edit: as for this app, I think the OS only asks once for a new app? I don't remember being asked a second time even when denying it.

I could also whine a bit about "this app wants to access files on a removable volume" since my desktop has a thunderbolt ssd plugged in for extra space...

johncassil 22 minutes ago | parent

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/repeated-allow-google-c...

You can see other people with tens of instances of the same app in the settings for this

InsideOutSanta 35 minutes ago | parent

Can I have the opposite, a tool that automatically clicks on "allow"? I installed the app, it's fine.

johncassil 27 minutes ago | parent

I assume that is a quick fork and publish, but seems scary lol

mostlysimilar 26 minutes ago | parent

Sometimes you need to use a particular piece of software but don't want all of its functionality. You're allowed to want some but not all.

ASalazarMX 13 minutes ago | parent

I don't know what Apple is looking for. The iPhone ships with a Weather app preinstalled, you allow it to your location so it can warn of severe weather, and several weeks later "OMG WEATHER APP IS USING YOUR LOCATION!!11!".

Same with MDM agents. Ours are installed automatically as part of the Apple Business Manager configuration, we manually grant them precise location in the background, and months later "HEY USER, WANNA BLOCK LOCATION FROM 'MDM SERVICE'?".

VCFundedGenYer 11 minutes ago | parent

That was due to antitrust pressure such that they did not self-prefer their own apps.

sam1714 10 minutes ago | parent

The first scenario is due to anti-trust complaints forcing Apple to treat their pre-installed apps identically to third-party ones. (Also why you can "delete" system apps.)

bdavbdav 7 minutes ago | parent

Doubly annoying as it asks for the widget separately.

InsideOutSanta 9 minutes ago | parent

I didn't say you weren't. I'm asking for myself, not for you.

ShinyLeftPad 24 minutes ago | parent

Have a problem with pesky permissions dialogs from sandboxed apps? This unsandboxed unverified app that requests Accessibility permissions, to the rescue!

jshier 15 minutes ago | parent

I'd rather something tell me exactly why this popped up in the first place, as every new OS version seems to introduce more triggers. I have apps that now pop this up when I quit, which doesn't make much sense.

tobi_bsf 14 minutes ago | parent

Says a lot about the state of Mac OS.

bigwheels 12 minutes ago | parent

Did Apple hire some of the folks who created Windows 11?