Google brings this privacy feature to old Android versions – Times of India

Google is rolling out an important feature to devices running on older versions of Android. Via a blog post, the company said that it is bringing Android 11’s app permission auto-reset feature to smartphones running Android 6 and higher. The feature resets an app’s runtime permissions if the app isn’t used for over months.
What is Android’s permission auto-reset feature?
Whenever a user downloads and runs an app on the phone, he/she is generally prompted to grant permission for contacts, SMSes, location etc. With the Android’s permission auto-reset feature, apps that have not been used by a user for a longer time automatically loses access to these permissions. This action, Google says, has the same effect as if the user viewed a permission in system settings and changed your app’s access level to ‘Deny’.
The feature was first introduced with Android 11 last year and is now rolling out to older versions of Android.
While Google says that all apps will be impacted by the feature. It has made an exemption for enterprise-managed apps and apps with permissions fixed by enterprise policy.
When will the feature hit older Android phones?
Google says that the app permission auto-reset feature will be rolled out in December this year. “The feature will be enabled by default for apps targeting Android 11 (API level 30) or higher. However, users can enable permission auto-reset manually for apps targeting API levels 23 to 29”, Google says in the post.
How does this impact a developer?
In the post, Google says that if needed, 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.