grant only the permissions each feature needs

Accessibility — required

Reads the focused editable field and caret geometry, positions ghost text, and inserts text you explicitly accept.

Input Monitoring — required

Detects typing activity and acceptance keys while another app is active.

Screen Recording — optional

Captures the focused window for local OCR context. Cotabby does not record video or save a screenshot history.

1. 1. Open Cotabby Settings → Permissions.
2. 2. Choose Grant Access beside a missing permission.
3. 3. Enable Cotabby in the macOS Privacy & Security pane that opens.
4. 4. Accept Quit & Reopen when macOS requires it, or relaunch Cotabby manually.
5. 5. Return to Settings and confirm the row says Granted.

The application in the permission list should be the copy of Cotabby in Applications, not an older copy left in Downloads.

With Screen Recording, Cotabby can extract nearby visible text using Apple's on-device OCR and use a bounded excerpt as suggestion context. The screenshot and extracted text stay local in the shipped release.

Without this permission, autocomplete still works. Fast Mode remains active and suggestions rely on the editable field plus any other enabled local context source.

• Quit Cotabby completely.
• Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → the affected permission.
• Remove the old Cotabby entry, then add the copy in Applications again.
• Launch Cotabby and confirm Settings now reports Granted.
• If multiple app copies exist, delete or rename the stale copy before retrying.

Disable Cotabby in the corresponding Privacy & Security pane. Removing Accessibility or Input Monitoring stops the core autocomplete pipeline; removing Screen Recording only removes visual context.

For the deeper data flow, storage, and network model, read Cotabby security and the privacy policy.