Permissions
Accessibility is the only permission Tinycast requests, and only when you use a feature that needs it.
Tinycast asks for one permission: Accessibility. Nothing else is ever requested.
The launcher, the calculator, the emoji picker and search all work with no permission at all.
Accessibility
macOS calls this "control your computer". In Tinycast it is what allows the app to read from and write to the window you were in before the palette opened.
Grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, or from Settings → Permissions, which shows the current status and opens the right pane for you.
What needs it
| Feature | Why |
|---|---|
| Clipboard paste-back | Puts the clip into the app you came from |
| Emoji paste | Same |
| Snippets | Watches for the expansion keyword, then inserts the text |
| Window management | Reads and sets other apps' window frames |
| Hyper key | Rewrites the physical key into a modifier chord |
| Double-tap modifier hotkeys | Detects the tap pattern |
getSelectedText in extensions | Reads the selection from the front app |
You are prompted the first time you use one of these, not at launch.
Snippets and keystroke matching
Snippet keyword expansion is the one feature that watches typing, so it is worth being precise about.
- Snippets ship disabled, and enabling them shows an explanation first. Turning the feature on is the consent — there is no separate switch.
- Matching happens entirely on device. Keystrokes are never stored and never sent anywhere.
- The typing buffer holds at most 256 characters and resets on app switch, on any modifier shortcut, when Secure Event Input is active, and after 15 seconds of inactivity.
- Tinycast uses a listen-only event tap on the Accessibility grant. It deliberately does not use Input Monitoring.
- A settings backup can never enable it. The
snippetsEnabledflag is excluded from exports on purpose, so importing a file someone sent you cannot switch on keystroke listening.
Full Disk Access
Tinycast detects Full Disk Access but never requests it.
The uninstaller probes silently to work out which files it will be able
to move. Without the grant, protected locations — ~/Library/Containers,
~/Library/Group Containers, ~/Library/Cookies — are shown as locked rows rather than being
removed. The probe can only under-report, so the worst case is a row you have to clear by hand.
Automation and Bluetooth
Two system actions trigger their own system prompts the first time you run them:
- Show Info in Finder drives Finder through Apple Events, raising the standard Automation prompt.
- Toggle Bluetooth raises the Bluetooth prompt.
Both are requested at first use of that specific action, never up front.
What File Search does not need
File Search asks for no file permission whatsoever. It reads the system Spotlight index and structurally excludes hidden paths and application-bundle contents, which is exactly what lets it stay permission-free. If Spotlight has not indexed something, you get a thinner result list rather than a permission prompt.