Mobile apps are notorious for asking for permissions they don’t have to. You have probably noticed some of your Android apps that request permissions that are excessive and completely unrelated to the app’s actual usefulness, such as if a flashlight app requests access to your camera, microphone, or location. When an app asks for permissions beyond what it needs to function, it’s usually so the company behind the app can collect as much data as possible. your information as possible and sell it to third parties such as advertisers and data brokers.
Find permissions like access to your location, camera, microphone, contacts, browsing history, and photo library. These can be particularly intrusive if they are not explicitly required for an application to work. An app can collect a large amount of extremely sensitive personal information from these permissions, which can pose a significant risk to your privacy if that data is mishandled or exposed in a breach. This is why it is important to manage app permissions on your Android devices.
Always make sure to keep app permissions to a minimum. Give your apps permission to access only what they need to access on your device to provide the functionality you need from them. For example, a weather app or navigation app will naturally need access to your location to work properly, but there’s no reason it should need access to your camera or contacts. And in some cases, you may not even need to provide a weather app with your location data if you can manually enter your zip code or city.
Fortunately, it’s easy to change app permissions on your Android device, and you can choose whether to manage permissions by app or by permission type.
Please note that the steps below apply to devices running Android 11 and above. Here’s how to manage app permissions on your Android device.
How to Manage Android App Permissions Per App
If you are concerned about the permissions given to a certain app on your Android device, you can manage the permissions per app. This is what you need to do:
1. Play Settings.
two. Play Applications.
3. Scroll down and tap on the app in question (or you can search for the app by tapping on the magnifying glass icon).
Four. Play permissions.
5. Touch a permission to allow or disallow.
You can also access the permissions from any app by tapping and holding the app icon on your phone screen. tap on the Information icon in the upper right corner of the window that appears to access the Application information menu and touch permissions from there.
From the Application information menu, you can also enable the Remove permissions if app is not used feature, which removes permissions for the app if you haven’t used it for three months.
How to Manage Android App Permissions by Permission Type
If you want to see which apps have denied or allowed access to a certain permission, like your microphone or location, you can manage your app permissions by permission type. That is how:
1. Play Settings.
two. Play Privacy.
3. Play permission manager.
Four. Touch the permission type to see which apps allow the selected permission.
5. Touch an app and select Allow either do not let.
How to universally manage camera and microphone access for all apps
You can even universally deny all apps from accessing your camera and/or microphone with a single toggle switch if you want to take a hard line on those two permissions. This is how you can toggle camera and microphone permissions on all apps on your Android device:
1. Play Settings.
two. Play Privacy.
3. Lever camera access Y microphone access On or off.
Going this route can be a great way to ensure that no apps have access to your camera or microphone. However, please note that video communication applications such as Zoom or Skype, which rely on your camera and microphone to function, will not function properly if you have these permissions set to the “off” position.
For more tips, see Five tips to make your Android phone feel like new againWhat clear cookies and cache on your Android device and remove excess junk files and how sanitize and remove fingerprints from your phone’s dirty screen.
