Privacy & Security prompt not triggered after Sonoma update

[pj0ta]

- macOS version: 14.0
- Alfred version: 5.1.3 Build 2175
- Bug: system prompt to grant Alfred access to Bluetooth not triggered 
- Workaround: add Alfred to list of applications allowed to use Bluetooth from "System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy > Bluetooth"

 

This workflow uses blueutil to connect/disconnect Bluetooth devices paired to your Mac. It was working fine until upgrading to Sonoma (or maybe Alfred's update 5.1.3). After one of those, the workflow stopped working with no apparent reason listed on Alfred's debugger console.

 

When testing blueutil on iTerm, a prompt required granting Bluetooth access permissions to iTerm. Such prompt didn't pop up when running the workflow, so I manually added Alfred to the list of applications allowed to use Bluetooth from System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy > Bluetooth. After that, the workflow worked again with no issues.

 

It could be that, after upgrading to Sonoma, Alfred was removed from the Bluetooth access list under Privacy & Security settings and, for some reason, Alfred doesn't trigger the Bluetooth access popup when it's required. 

I haven't tested it, but the same problem could be reproduced when using workflows that require access to resources other than Bluetooth, like the camera or microphone. 

 

[vitor]

I can reproduce some oddities in Sonoma with another workflow which uses blueutil. Even with permissions some things seem to not work like turning bluetooth on or off or even correctly identifying its state.

Alfred 5.1.3 didn’t touch Bluetooth, and on Ventura and below I never needed permissions for these tasks (even though the menu seems to have been there since Big Sur). macOS itself should bring up the permissions dialog when a tool tries to access it, so it’s strange it’s not doing that in this case. I’ll have to investigate more, but it seems the issue may lie with blueutil specifically, it uses private methods so something may have changed in Sonoma that it needs to adapt to, but unfortunately the developer doesn’t have access to Sonoma.