Create a dynamic screensaver

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Created Jun ’20

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Hi guys,
I try to create a dynamic screensaver in swift and in objc (i made 2 differents try and i don't care witch to choose).
It's a screensaver with a webview loading a webpage. Videos are running automatically. In a perfect world, users have to be allowed to move the mouse without exiting the screensaver.
In an older version, i just catch mouseMoved event and it was OK. But since Catalina (and perhaps one version older), i can't catch this event anymore.

Is there a way to do my dynamic screensaver or is this capacity definitively blocked by Apple?

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Answer 1

C_Wiz OP

Jun ’20

@jbwils short answser, as of right now, not possible on Catalina and Big Sur, this may change soon though.

Longer answer, Apple introduced in Catalina a new Sandboxing mechanism for the old fashioned plugin architecture. Screen savers (which are still plugins) are limited by the entitlements of legacyScreenSaver.appex, which doesn't include raw access to keyboard and mouse.

Apple started moving its screen savers to an app extension format, but as of right now there's no extension target in Xcode 12 beta 1 to make screen savers. Hopefully this will come in a later seed and then, you'd be able (in theory) to do what you want by giving your own entitlements.

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