September 21, 2021

Google plans to increase the prominence of its “permissions auto-reset” feature.

The Android Privacy feature automatically reverts an app’s previously granted permissions to access, among other things, the location of a device, camera and microphone.

Google released the feature for Android 11 in 2020 and will extend it to “billions more devices” through Google Play services on devices with Android 6.0 (API level 23) from 2015 onwards by December this year.

Google explained in a blog post that the feature is enabled by default for apps that aim at Android 11 (API level 30) or higher. Nevertheless, users can enable permission to automatically reset manually for apps that aim at API level 23 to 29,”

This feature is designed to help Android users control their privacy-sensitive app permissions in the context of a variety of apps on a device, in particular the “runtime permissions” of an app or “dangerous permissions” for accessing location, contact information, messages and other personal user data.

The auto-reset feature will be phased in after its launch in December and is expected to reach all devices between Android 6 and Android 10 by the first quarter of 2022.

For more information, view the original story from ZDnet.