As I understand it, X11 has many inherent security concerns, including programs being able to read the contents of other windows and intercept keystrokes. Wayland addresses these concerns but at the moment breaks certain functions like screen readers, cursor warping, and the ability of a program to resize its own window.
I am curious as to how the display protocols of MacOS and Windows handle these situations differently. How does a program in those operating systems gain permission to read the contents of other windows, if at all? What is to be done in Wayland for these functions to be more seamless or are there inherent obstacles?
I don’t know about Wayland or MacOS, but In Windows, you can access quite a lot of information via WPF, UWP, WinUI, etc. This is to allow assistive tech to be able to do what they need to do, such as screen readers.
As long as you know how to search for window and control handles, you can read, store, and digest pretty much everything you as a person can see. No questions or elevation of privileges needed.
The caveat is that you’d have to have local access at a minimum.