Why do you say "I presume from Zotero"?

That's not a permission Zotero needs or requests. Can you take a picture of the Input Monitoring pane in System Preferences where it shows Zotero, upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox), and provide a link here?

(OSX has been getting stricter about many things. I wonder if this has something to do with word processor plugin interaction, which is the only time I can imagine this would be relevant.)

Screenshot here https://www.dropbox.com/s/xiwp2wxvohcitmq/Zotero permission to monitor keyboard input macOS 10.15, Zotero 5.0.75.png?dl=0

If I remember correctly, I launched Zotero and got the progress bar to indicate it was updating. I then saw a message telling me to set the security setting. I assumed it was something to do with integration issues eg with a word process or browser.

That's really quite strange. Are you running any system utility that might inject itself into other programs?

Delete Zotero from the Applications folder, open Terminal via Spotlight, paste in the following command, and press Return:

tccutil reset All org.zotero.Zotero

That should remove Zotero from all sections in the Privacy preferences.

If you then install Zotero again from the download page and open it, are you prompted again?

Catalina

{edit: my sincere apologies for the rambling style of this narrative.}
I think that something about this should be added to the Zotero documentation. People are going to encounter this. I was able to import metadata from database and publisher websites without problem many times a day for many days but today the situation presented itself.

The exact message is:

"Zotero.app" would like to receive keystrokes from any application. Grant access to this application in Security & Privacy preferences, located in System Preferences.

See Screen-shot here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4t1hikudgdrxyrn/Screenshot 2019-10-14 16.17.53.png?dl=0

There is no option to say "no" as you suggest. Clicking the DENY button makes the dialog box go away but the metadata will not download and the Saving to Zotero notice seems to remain indefinately. If I try again I receive the same alert.

This is the second time I received this "Keyboard Receiving" alert upon clicking on the Zotero import icon when on a publisher website (this one was: 10.1002/ejsp.2508). The first time I just ignored the alert and moved on. Looking back, the item I hoped to import is not in my Zotero Library or collection. I find it interesting that I was able to add other article metadata from that publisher (Taylor and Francis) after ignoring the alert that day. (I was able to import it today.) This was not the first item I imported today using the Zotero icon on my Firefox browser and the other article metadata came through fine.

This time the import wouldn't go through until I opened system preferences and gave permission. The Saving to _collection_ notice box appeared but nothing was saved. The "saving to" notice didn't go away on its own. Only after giving permission and restarting Zotero could the import take place.

I'll remove the permission. I had to grant the permission this afternoon so that I could complete my work. I tried clicking deny but I couldn't do anything with Zotero. The alert box did go away when I clicked deny. But came right back as soon as I clicked in the Zotero window. I only got Zotero to work again by granting permissions, quitting Zotero and restarting Zotero again. Before and after I clicked "deny" Firefox allowed me to open new tabs and I tried (unsuccessfully) to research this situation via Google. I clearly didn't search using useful keywords.

I'd need to keep debug on always until the intermittent problem occurs again. I am willing to do this but only if you say that the debug file's utility would outweigh the cumbersomeness of the file's massive size. (I guess that I could turn debug on and if the issue doesn't occur turn it off and immediately turn it on again to wait for the error.)

Do you want to suspend this conversation here and take it up on the development site or by support email?

I will turn on debug.

Debug D43717032

This is a rather long log but the alert box appeared at the very end. I clicked DENY and was able to continue and to import another item. I will restart logging. The last time this happened problems developed soon after I clicked deny.

Same happened to me. The popup showed right after I drag-n-dropped a pdf from Finder to Zotero.

I did not get this notification until I imported a few hard to find articles from sci-hub.

Importing 'dodgy' PDFs from couldn't be the reason, could it?

Same happened to me. The popup appear right after I uploaded a pdf from Finder to Zotero (thanks Catalina!).
A very disturbing situation.
I need to know if I am safe or if it is better to uninstall and switch to other softwares.
Someone could advise me?

Ok thanks.
It is a very strange kind bug, please when you will have some news about this inconvenient can you inform us?
Thanks again

Was my debug (above) not useful? I can try to capture the alert again.

Was my debug (above) not useful? I can try to capture the alert again.

Nothing relevant was logged, but that's not surprising — whatever's causing this, it's likely at a lower level that what we log. (In your case I was also just curious about the save failing after, but I'm not sure that was actually related.)

The goal here is really just to see if anyone is able to reliably reproduce the problem after each reset, such that we could do further troubleshooting with known steps to reproduce. But I suspect the cause of this is subtle enough that we're not going to find that. If it were something clearer, we'd likely be getting many more reports of it and likely would've seen it ourselves.

@dstillman: I think yes. I no longer have the original pdf files, so I downloaded the zotero pdfs to my desktop, deleted them from zotero and then reloaded them back from Mac to zotero again, and everything seems fine (no imputes monitoring).
Do you think that some pdf has some malicious code?