Hi, I’m looking for clarification from folks familiar with CoreHID rather than App Review, as the guys there have not responded to my post (https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/820676)
We have a sandboxed macOS app that creates a virtual HID device (HIDVirtualDevice) as described in Creating virtual devices https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corehid/creatingvirtualdevices
To work at all, the app requires the entitlement:
com.apple.developer.hid.virtual.device
With this entitlement present, macOS shows the system prompt requesting Accessibility permission
App would like to control this computer using accessibility features. Grant access to this application in Security and Privacy preferences located in System Preferences.
when HIDVirtualDevice(properties:) is called. There is no mention of Accessibility in the HIDVirtualDevice documentation, but the behavior is reproducible and seems unavoidable.
My question is therefore:
Is creating a virtual HID device from userspace via HIDVirtualDevice considered inherently incompatible with Mac App Store distribution?
In other words:
Is the Accessibility prompt an expected side‑effect of this API?
And if so, does that mean using HIDVirtualDevice is only practical for direct (non–App Store) distribution unless the app is explicitly an accessibility tool?
I’m not asking about review policy details—just whether, from a technical/system point of view, HIDVirtualDevice is actually intended to be usable by App Store apps.
For context, there seem to be public, non‑accessibility uses of Apple’s virtual HID infrastructure, like
-
this recent post: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/820708 and corresponding Github repo
-
this project.
I don't know if these intend to use the App Store, but they might end up in the same situation.
Any insights from people who’ve worked with CoreHID would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Magnus