An app that asks for nothing
Horologe asks for no macOS permissions at all: no Accessibility, Input Monitoring, Screen Recording, microphone, files or location. It makes no network calls either. It's $5.99, paid once, and the list of things it can reach is empty.
Horologe is a desk clock for macOS: four faces, five bells, the quarters or the counted hour, quiet hours from 10pm to 8am, about three and a half megabytes, macOS 15 or later. But the useful part of this post is the checking — how to look at any app's permissions and see what it has asked for.
What a permission prompt is
macOS asks before an app can use something sensitive: the camera, the microphone, your location, your contacts, your calendar, your files, the screen, or the keyboard. The prompt comes from the system, not from the app, and it names the thing the app wants. If you say no, the app doesn't get it. You can change the answer later in System Settings.
A prompt is not a verdict on the app. A recorder needs the microphone; a map needs location. The question is whether the reason is clear and whether the app still works when you say no.
What an entitlement is
An entitlement is a line in an app's signed code that says which system capabilities it may ask for. It doesn't grant access by itself — the prompt still does that — but an app without the entitlement for a capability can't use it even if you wanted it to. For a sandboxed app, the entitlement list is also the boundary of what it can reach outside its own container.
You don't usually see entitlements in System Settings. You see the result: the categories the app has asked about, and whether the switch is on.
How to check any app
Open System Settings, then Privacy & Security. The page lists the categories: Location, Contacts, Calendars, Camera, Microphone, Accessibility, Screen Recording, Input Monitoring, Files and Folders, and the rest. Click one and you'll see the apps that have asked, with a switch beside each. If an app isn't in the list, it hasn't asked for that thing.
That's the plain-language view, and it's enough for most questions. If you want the deeper view, the app's signature and entitlements can be inspected with developer tools, but you shouldn't need to do that to decide whether a clock should be allowed to see your screen.
What Horologe asks for
Nothing. No permission dialog appears on its behalf, now or later, because there's nothing for it to ask about. It reads the clock your Mac already keeps, draws a face, and makes a sound through the speakers. It has no network entitlement, no account, no telemetry, no license check and no update ping. What the one-time price buys is the longer note on the no-server side of the same design.
The limit is the same limit as everywhere else: it can't know you're on a call, because knowing would mean watching your screen or listening at your microphone. That's why the mute is one click and quiet hours are on by default. The honest answer about annoying clocks takes that objection seriously; quiet hours is the setting itself.
Horologe is $5.99 once. If you want the short version: open the privacy pane, look for Horologe, and notice that there's nothing to find.
Read next: No subscription: what a one-time price buys