macOS gates the things Amlin does behind four permissions. Amlin shows their live status in two places:
Getting Started — open the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar → ? Getting Started. It's a checklist with live check marks that refresh when you switch back to Amlin.
Settings → Dictation → Permissions — for the two dictation-specific grants
Microphone
What it's for: hearing you — the "Me" side of a meeting, and everything you dictate.
How to grant: Amlin prompts the first time you start capture. To grant it manually: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone → Amlin.
Screen & System Audio Recording
What it's for: hearing the other side of a call. This is the permission that makes bot-free capture possible.
Amlin never records your screen. macOS bundles system-audio capture under the screen-recording permission, and Chromium requires a video track to exist before it will route system audio — so Amlin creates one and throws away every frame. No pixels are read, stored, or transmitted.
How to grant: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording → Amlin. If Amlin isn't in the list, add it with the + button, then quit Amlin (⌘Q) and relaunch — macOS only applies this grant on a fresh launch.
Accessibility
What it's for: letting dictation type text into other apps.
How to grant: Settings → Dictation → Request permissions, or System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → Amlin Dictate.
Input Monitoring
What it's for: noticing that you're holding the fn key.
How to grant: Settings → Dictation → Open Input Monitoring… — macOS often won't populate this list on its own, so use the button in Amlin rather than hunting for it.
If permissions stop working
macOS silently revokes these grants after some system updates — it's the single most common support issue for any app in this category. Symptoms: the other side of a call records silent, or dictation stops responding to fn.
The fix: open the checklist, toggle the affected permission off and back on in System Settings, then quit and relaunch Amlin. For dictation specifically, Settings → Dictation → Restart dictation recreates the key listener without a relaunch.