Brutkey

Marcin Wichary
@mwichary@mastodon.online

It’s been over a year with these macOS pop-ups and I still have any idea why an app is asking, what should I say, what is the penalty for choosing Don’t Allow, etc. What a frustrating experience.

(Edit: I’m showing Chrome here but I am getting them for so many other apps without seemingly any rhyme or reason.)

Marcin Wichary
@mwichary@mastodon.online

I say Don’t Allow all the time not because I think the app doesn’t deserve access, but because I have no idea why it’s asking to begin with! I just feels like noise, and bad UI storytelling.

Marcin Wichary
@mwichary@mastodon.online

A classic rule for these: show them after I invoked an action that lets me connect the permission to the intent, or explain the reason. Other dialogs like these are usually much better at this (for example: asking for permission to a Documents folder when I try to save a file). I am not sure why this one is so awful.

MattStudies
@mgaudet@discuss.systems

@mwichary@mastodon.online I think you put your finger on why it's so awful in your first post: 1) It's a deeply ambiguous permission that's very hard even for an expert to build a mental risk model around (compare to the Documents example). 2) The connection between your action and the dialog is very obscured. 3) It's very unclear what happens if you say no! Can you change your mind later? if so, where?

I love the idea of programs having to ask for consent, but the practical form of it can be deeply exhausting.