Even more warning dialogs: macOS 26 tattles on apps running in the background
Apple is integrating a new warning into its Mac operating system: It is intended to make users aware that apps may continue to run in the background.
(Image: Nanain/Shutterstock.com)
"Your Mac has detected that this app was not terminated as expected and is still running". This warning text appears in macOS 26 Tahoe if certain processes of an app continue to run in the background after the quit command. Apple drew developers' attention to this on the sidelines of WWDC.
Mac developers should clean up processes
All app processes should be terminated as soon as someone decides to close the app, according to the note in a session on data protection in app development. Apps that start processes via fork, exec or POSIX spawn should also clean them up again when they are terminated, emphasized an Apple employee.
(Image:Â Apple)
macOS 26 "heuristically" recognizes whether such processes continue to run – and then warns the user. The user is given the option to allow this only once or always, or to force quit the app. No further details were provided.
Testers of the first beta of macOS 26 Tahoe describe the warning as irritating. It appears, for example, when closing apps such as Apple Mail or the configuration interface of tools such as the VPN client Wireguard or the firewall Lulu. The latter two in particular are specifically designed to run continuously in the background. In the beta's warning dialog, the operating system points out that these apps have access to "sensors or personal data" in the background – "even if they do not appear to be open".
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More and more warning dialogs in macOS
This is not the only new warning dialog that Apple is planning for macOS 26 Tahoe: In future, access to the clipboard will also have to be explicitly approved by the user first. For the time being, it remains to be seen what this will look like in the final version of the operating system, which is expected to be released in September. The introduction of the demand in iOS was bumpy and initially led to a constant barrage of largely superfluous warning dialogs. In recent years, Apple has integrated more and more new prompts and warnings into the operating system, which are increasingly annoying for professional users and often difficult for beginners to understand.
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