Extensions (System Preferences)

The Extensions pane of the System Preferences in macOS was developed by Apple to allow users to manage system extensions and kexts installed on their Mac.

History
The Extensions preference pane adds functionality to macOS similar to the Extensions Manager from classic Mac OS. For earlier versions of Mac OS X, developers previously created kernel extensions (kexts) to directly modify the system's kernel, but this was deemed a security risk without a straighforward graphical user interface to manage them. The Extensions preference pane was introduced in OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) in 2014 to help manage these extensions. Apple then introduced system extensions in macOS Catalina (10.15) in 2019 as a more secure alternative to kexts that would only operate in. Starting in macOS 10.15.4, the continued use of kernel extensions would trigger a warning to the user. Support for kexts would start to be phased out in macOS Big Sur except for Apple-approved enterprise developers. Any legacy kexts still installed would require user approval to be loaded upon every startup.