Apps for mobile devices often ask for permissions that they don’t need. Many Android applications ask for excessive permissions. This could be the case if a flashlight application requests access to your location, camera, microphone, or microphone. Apps asking for permissions beyond what they need to function are usually done so that the company behind them can sell as much of your data to third parties, such as data brokers and advertisers.
Be aware of permissions such as access to your location and camera, microphone, contacts or browsing history, and your photo library. If these permissions are not required to allow an app function, they can be extremely intrusive and dangerous. Apps can gather sensitive information through certain permissions. This can expose your privacy and pose a serious threat to your privacy. It is important to control app permissions on Android devices.
It’s crucial to manage your app permissions to ensure that they are minimal. To provide the functionality that you need, only give permissions to your Android apps to access your device’s resources. Your location is required for your navigation or weather apps to work properly. It doesn’t have to access your camera or any of your contacts. In some cases, it might not be necessary to provide your location data to a weather app if you are able to manually enter your city or ZIP code.
It’s simple to modify app permissions on Android devices. You can also choose to manage permissions per app or per permission type.
The steps below are applicable to Android 11 and higher devices. This is how to manage permissions on Android devices.
How to manage Android app permissions per app
You can control permissions for specific apps on your Android device if you are concerned about their permissions. Here are the steps:
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Apps
3. Scroll down, tap the app you are interested in (or click the magnifying glass icon to search for it).
4. Tap Permissions.
5. Tap on a permission for allowing or disallowing.
By tapping and holding any app’s icon, you can also access Permissions menu. To access the App Info menu, tap the Information icon at the top of the window. From there, tap Permissions.
You can enable the Remove permissions from app is unused menu. This will remove permissions for an app that has not been used for at least three months.
How to manage permissions for Android apps by permission type
You can view which permissions you have granted or denied to apps, such as your microphone or location. Here’s how:
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Privacy
3. Tap the Permission manager.
4. To see which apps permit the chosen permission, tap the permission type.
5. Tap on an app to select Allow or Deny.
How to manage universally camera and microphone access across all apps
If you don’t want any apps to have access to your camera or microphone, you can also universally deny them all by using a single toggle switch. Here’s how to toggle permissions for camera and microphone across all apps on Android.
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Privacy
3. Toggle Microphone access and Camera access on or off.
This route can help you to ensure that no app has access your camera and microphone. These permissions must be set to “off”. Video communication apps such as Zoom and Skype, which rely upon your microphone and camera to function, will not work properly.
