Granting permissions
Why CogniPage asks for Accessibility and Screen Recording, and how to grant or withdraw each one.
Reading along means seeing what is on your screen, so CogniPage needs your operating system's permission to do it. These are serious permissions, and you grant them yourself — the app cannot give them to itself, and you can withdraw any of them at any time without uninstalling.
If you would rather CogniPage never read your other apps at all, choose Reader only during setup or in Settings → Tracking. Nothing on this page is needed then: you read in the in-app Reader, and only what you open there is captured. The one exception is listening along to a video with no captions on a Mac, which asks for audio recording, below.
What each permission is for
| Permission | Needed for | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility (UI Automation on Windows) |
The main way CogniPage reads text. Your OS exposes a structured tree of the text an app is displaying — the same interface screen readers use — and CogniPage reads paragraphs from it. | Yes |
| Screen Recording (screen capture on Windows) |
Two things: reading windows that publish no text at all (image-only PDFs, canvas-drawn readers, Firefox on macOS), and tapping the audio a video you approved is playing. Both processed on your device. | Strongly recommended |
| Automation (Apple Events) macOS only |
Identifying which app and document is in front, so a captured paragraph is filed against the right material. | Recommended |
| Audio recording macOS 14.2 and later |
Only for listening along to a video in the Reader that has no captions. CogniPage hears that one video and nothing else: no other app, and not your microphone. Asked the first time you press Listen along; Windows needs nothing. | Optional |
| Camera | Only if you scan a physical book. The page is read for text and the frame discarded. | Optional |
| Notifications | Review reminders and other nudges. Asked for the first time you turn push notifications on. | Optional |
Granting them on macOS
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Use the buttons on Home
Each permission card has a button that opens the exact panel in System Settings — quicker and less error-prone than finding it yourself.
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Switch CogniPage on in the list
In System Settings → Privacy & Security, find Accessibility, then Screen & System Audio Recording, and enable CogniPage in each. macOS may ask for your password or Touch ID.
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Restart CogniPage if macOS asks
macOS sometimes only hands a newly granted permission to a freshly launched app. If a card still says Action needed after you have switched it on, quit from the menu-bar icon and open CogniPage again.
Granting them on Windows
Windows needs less setup: UI Automation requires no prompt and no administrator rights, so text capture works as soon as the app is installed. Screen capture and per-application audio capture are used only when a window publishes no readable text or when you start a watch-along, and the camera is requested the first time you open the book scanner.
Withdrawing a permission
Turn any of them back off in the same place you granted it. CogniPage keeps working with less: without Screen Recording it simply cannot read image-only documents or watch along with video; without Accessibility it cannot capture reading at all.
Granting Accessibility only makes capture possible. CogniPage still asks you about each website, document and video separately, and captures nothing until you answer — see Tracking and approvals.