Keyboard shortcuts

Press or to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Check who holds SecureInput lock

Individual applications on macOS can request SecureInput mode, which disables some functionality that would otherwise allow to capture input. One can check if SecureInput is active and which process holds the lock:

$ ioreg -l -w 0 | grep SecureInput
  |   "IOConsoleUsers" = ({"kCGSSessionOnConsoleKey"=Yes,"kSCSecuritySessionID"=100024,"kCGSSessionSecureInputPID"=123,"kCGSSessionGroupIDKey"=20,
      "kCGSSessionIDKey"=257,"kCGSessionLoginDoneKey"=Yes,"kCGSSessionSystemSafeBoot"=No,"kCGSSessionUserNameKey"="user",
      "kCGSessionLongUserNameKey"="username","kCGSSessionAuditIDKey"=100001,"kCGSSessionLoginwindowSafeLogin"=No,"kCGSSessionUserIDKey"=101})

The kCGSSessionSecureInputPID holds the PID of the process that holds the SecureInput lock. Find that process with ps:

ps aux | grep $pid
Last change: , commit: e36c08b