What is this purple icon in my menu bar? (macOS 13 Ventura)
It does nothing when clicked on and it cannot be removed.
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From what I've found, in macOS Ventura this icon appear as a result of a possibly buggy interaction between the statuses of:
- System Settings > Sharing > Remote Management (and/or Screen Sharing, possibly), and
- System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording
It seems to be trying to indicate both the "Your screen is being observed" status from Screen Recording but is also then being combined with the status from Remote Management, hence the "Send Message to Administrator" option.
I went (in macOS Ventura) to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording and start unchecking items, and the icon disappeared.
So the good news is that it would seem to just be a legitimate system indicator and does not seem to cause any actual problems, while the bad news is that it is related to some potentially buggy behavior, will annoyingly show inconsistently, and cannot be controlled easily.
