In macOS 26.4, Apple introduced a new pop-up warning when you try to paste a command into Terminal. A new support document explains why these and other Mac Terminal pop-ups appear.
Apple Support documentation describes Terminal prompts blocked by macOS
Today, Apple published a new support document titled “If your Mac blocks pasting or scripting Terminal commands.”
When macOS 26.4 was released earlier this year, it brought new security features to protect unsuspecting Mac users from Terminal-based malware.
This feature is an alert that tells you that pasting into the terminal has been blocked. You will be warned that the text you try to paste may contain malware.
However, until now, we weren’t sure when exactly this popup would appear.
However, Apple is clarifying in a new document today, stating:
This warning appears if you don’t use Terminal regularly and copy commands from places like websites, chat agents, or messaging or email apps.
It appears that this alert was originally shown to regular terminal users. Therefore, the behavior may have changed starting with macOS 26.4.
Similarly, Apple explains why you might receive some other types of Terminal alerts:
If your Mac displays a “Malware detected, paste blocked” or “Malicious script blocked” alert
These alerts appear when macOS detects that a command or script contains known malware and blocks it.
In such cases, the popup will not show the option to continue pasting text. Instead, Apple says, “If you believe this command or script was blocked because the website you were trying to access was incorrectly reported as fraudulent, you can report an error.”
Have you seen these terminal alerts? If so, are you a regular terminal user? Let us know in the comments.
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