The past few releases of Android have seen a heavy focus on security features, specifically with permissions. Now, in Android 11’s third developer preview, Google has added a new “auto revoke” feature.
Live in Android 11 DP3, all apps now have a new option that turns off permissions after a “few months” of not being used. What does this mean? If an app has been given permission to do something — in the example below, Discord with the camera permission — Android will automatically revoke that permission if you haven’t used the app in a long time.
There are aspects of this feature we’re still not entirely sure about. For example, how long is a “few months?” That’s something we’ll have to learn as Android 11 arrives on more devices, but this ability to revoke permissions automatically on inactive apps is certainly an excellent security feature.
This feature was pointed out by XDA’s Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, but we’ve confirmed auto revoke is live on our Pixel 3a running Android 11 DP3 as well. Hopefully, this arrives in later releases of the platform. Personally, I’m hoping this becomes the default setting, too, instead of an optional one that users have to dig into the settings to apply.
Stay tuned to 9to5Google and let us know on Twitter or in the comments if you see any new changes we haven’t covered!
More on Android 11:
- Android 11 DP3: All notifications can be dismissed, even those annoying ongoing ones
- Android 11 DP3: You can ‘undo’ removing an app from Recents multitasking
- Android 11 DP3: New screenshot UI goes live without scrolling option
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