Google Is rolling out an important feature to devices running earlier versions of Android. Through a blog post, the company said that it is bringing Android 11‘s app permission Auto-reset feature for running smartphones Android 6 and higher. If the app is not used for more than months, this feature resets the runtime permissions of the app.
What is Android’s permission auto-reset feature?
Whenever a user downloads and runs the app on the phone, he/she is usually asked to grant permissions for Contacts, SMS, Location, etc. With Android’s permission auto-reset feature, apps that are not used by the user for a long time automatically lose access to these permissions. Google says this action has the same effect as if the user viewed the permission in System Settings and changed your app’s access level to ‘Deny’.
This feature was first introduced with Android 11 last year and is now being rolled out for older versions of Android.
While Google says that all apps will be affected by the feature. It has exempted for enterprise-managed apps and apps with permissions as dictated by enterprise policy.
When will the feature come to older Android phones?
Google says that the app permissions auto-reset feature will be rolled out in December this year. “This feature will be enabled by default for apps targeting Android 11 (API level 30) or higher. However, users can manually enable the auto-reset permission for apps targeting API levels 23 to 29”, Google says in the post.
How does this affect a developer?
In the post, Google says that if necessary, developers can ask the user to prevent the system from resetting their app’s permissions. This is useful in situations where users expect the app to work primarily in the background, even without interacting with it.
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