You are trying to share your screen in Zoom, Teams, Meet or Slack, or record it in OBS or Loom, and the app either shows a black rectangle, shows nothing, or tells you it needs permission and sends you to System Settings.

Here is the setting, and then the step that is probably the actual problem.

Granting it

1. Open System Settings.
2. Go to Privacy & Security, then Screen & System Audio Recording.
3. Find the app in the list and switch it on.
4. Quit the app completely and open it again.

To go straight there, this URL opens that section directly:

open "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.settings.PrivacySecurity.extension?Privacy_ScreenCapture"

Step 4 is the one that matters

macOS does not apply this permission to a running app. The app has to be restarted before it can see the screen at all, and most apps do not tell you that — they just carry on showing you a black rectangle.

Quitting means quitting, not closing the window. Use ⌘Q, or right-click the icon in the Dock and choose Quit. For anything that lives in the menu bar, quit it from its own menu; closing a window leaves it running.

If macOS offered you a Quit & Reopen button when you flicked the switch, that button does exactly this, and taking it is the reliable route.

The app is not in the list

An app only appears in that list once it has asked for the permission at least once. If it is not there:

1. Open the app.
2. Try the thing that needs the screen — start a share, start a recording.
3. Let it fail, or dismiss the permission dialog if one appears.
4. Look at the list again. It will be there now.

If it still is not, the app may be asking for something else. Sharing a single window rather than the whole screen goes through a different mechanism in some apps, and a camera-only video call needs Camera rather than Screen Recording.

It is switched on and still does not work

In rough order of how often it is the answer:

• It was never restarted. Genuinely, most of the time. Quit it properly and try again.
• There are two copies of the app. One in Applications and one still in Downloads, or an old version alongside a new one. macOS tracks the permission per copy, and you granted it to the one you are not running. Delete the spare.
• The app was updated or moved. Moving an app can invalidate the grant. Switch it off, switch it back on, restart the app.
• A browser needs its own permission. Screen sharing from a web app needs the browser to hold the permission, not the web app — grant it to Chrome, Safari or Edge, and then allow the site inside the browser as well. That is two separate consents and people usually only give one.
• A managed Mac. On a work machine, a profile can grant or withhold this centrally, and the switch may be locked.

If none of that helps, switching the app off, quitting it, switching it on and opening it again clears most stuck states — the order matters more than it should.

About the recurring prompt

Recent versions of macOS re-ask for confirmation from apps that capture the screen continuously, rather than granting the permission once and forever. The frequency changed during the macOS 15 cycle after developers pushed back, and it is not the same as it was in the early betas.

If a screen recorder you have been using for months suddenly asks again, that is this, not a bug and not the permission being lost. Confirm it and carry on.

The related permissions

Sharing a screen well usually needs more than one of these, and they are all in the same pane:

• Microphone — for your voice, separate from anything about the screen.
• Camera — for your face.
• Accessibility — some apps want it to draw over other windows, or to let a remote participant control your Mac.

They are each granted the same way, and each needs the same relaunch.