Google has recently announced that Android 11’s clever privacy-focused auto-reset permission feature is coming to billions of phones and tablets running on older operating system versions (Android 6 to 10) from December and will be made fully available in Q1 2022.
Auto-reset permission feature is mainly where the operating system impedes an app’s permission to access phones storage, camera, and other features if it has not been opened for long.
This feature was launched last year on Android 11 (API level 30) exclusively, but now it would be available on phones running with Android 6 and up with the help of Google Play Services. As reported by 9to5Google, Google claims billions of phones launched since will be made available with these features.
The feature is devised to protect users’ privacy by averting older apps from having free access to users’ phones if those apps haven’t been used for long. Android’s security features are designed to step in and reset these permissions once it becomes comprehensible that an app is no longer in use.
“The feature will be automatically enabled with Google Play Services running Android 6 (API level 23-29) and higher”, according to Google.
However, this needs to be enabled manually for apps that aren’t intending Android 11. Apps frequently working in the background, without being opened by users, might seek to disable permission for this privacy feature