Great question—this is a super common gotcha with Electron apps on macOS, even when you don’t explicitly call any accessibility APIs in your code. Let’s break this down into two clear parts: figuring out what’s triggering the request, and disabling it if you don’t need the functionality.

First: Identifying the Triggering Feature #

Even if your own code avoids accessibility APIs, Electron itself or third-party dependencies you’re using might be invoking them under the hood. The most frequent culprits are:

• Global keyboard shortcuts: If your app (or a dependency) uses Electron’s globalShortcut module to listen for system-wide key presses, macOS requires Accessibility permissions for this.
• Screen/window manipulation: Features like capturing the full screen, fetching precise window coordinates, or controlling other app windows can trigger the permission prompt.
• Hidden third-party code: Some npm packages (automation tools, window managers, or even certain analytics libraries) might use accessibility APIs without you noticing.

To pinpoint exactly what’s causing the request:

1. Open Console.app on your Mac, filter logs by your app’s name, and look for entries tagged "accessibility" or "authorization" when the prompt appears. The logs will often show the specific API or module that triggered the permission check.
2. Run your app in debug mode and use Electron’s developer tools to inspect the call stack when the prompt pops up—adding breakpoints around app initialization can help trace the source.
3. Check your Electron version: Older releases had default behaviors that triggered accessibility requests more easily, so updating to a recent stable version might narrow down the issue.

Second: Disabling the Permission Request #

If you confirm you don’t need the functionality triggering the prompt, here’s how to turn it off:

1. Explicitly Disable Accessibility Support in Electron #

Add this line before your app’s ready event fires to shut off accessibility-related features entirely:

const { app } = require('electron');

// Disable accessibility support to prevent permission prompts
app.setAccessibilitySupportEnabled(false);

app.on('ready', () => {
  // Your app initialization logic here
});

This tells Electron not to enable accessibility APIs, which should suppress the permission request.

2. Clean Up Your Packaging Configuration #

If you use tools like electron-builder or electron-packager:

• Double-check your macOS entitlements file (usually entitlements.plist) and remove the com.apple.security.accessibility entitlement if it’s present—this line explicitly requests accessibility access even if you don’t use it.
• Ensure your packaging config isn’t enabling any accessibility-related flags by default.

3. Remove Unnecessary Dependencies #

Scan your package.json for libraries that might use accessibility APIs (like automation tools or global shortcut handlers). If you’re not actively using them, uninstall them to eliminate the trigger entirely.

A quick heads-up: If you later add features that do require accessibility permissions (like global shortcuts), you’ll need to re-enable support and handle the permission prompt properly for users.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Dusan