Detecting screen recording settings on macOS Catalina

Question

What\'s is a reliable way to detect if user has enabled this API?

CGWindowListCreateImage returns a valid object even if screen recording API is disable

Answer 1

As of Nov19 chockenberry has correct answer.

As @onelittlefish pointed out the kCGWindowName is being omitted in case user has not enabled the screen recording access in privacy pane. This method also doesn't trigger the privacy alert.

- (BOOL)canRecordScreen
{
    if (@available(macOS 10.15, *)) {
        CFArrayRef windowList = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly, kCGNullWindowID);
        NSUInteger numberOfWindows = CFArrayGetCount(windowList);
        NSUInteger numberOfWindowsWithName = 0;
        for (int idx = 0; idx < numberOfWindows; idx++) {
            NSDictionary *windowInfo = (NSDictionary *)CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(windowList, idx);
            NSString *windowName = windowInfo[(id)kCGWindowName];
            if (windowName) {
                numberOfWindowsWithName++;
            } else {
                //no kCGWindowName detected -> not enabled
                break; //breaking early, numberOfWindowsWithName not increased
            }

        }
        CFRelease(windowList);
        return numberOfWindows == numberOfWindowsWithName;
    }
    return YES;
}