iPhone tower · floor

App permissions iPhone sorts by information, not by app

Looking up what app permissions iPhone holds for a particular app is harder than it sounds, and the reason is a design choice rather than a fault. Apple’s own description of the screen states it in the first line.

Knowing that turns a frustrating screen into a fast one, as long as you ask it the question it was built for. Going category by category — Contacts, Photos, Calendars, Microphone — and reading the list under each covers every app on the phone in one pass. Chasing a single suspicious app through the same screens is the same work done the hard way.

The fourth sits in the same screen as the others and is a different kind of thing. Access permissions are about something on your phone — a photo library, a microphone. Tracking is about what happens elsewhere: your activity being followed across other companies’ apps and websites. An app can hold no permissions at all and still ask to track you.

Two of the four have something the others do not, and it is the most practical part of this whole subject: an indicator that appears while the thing is happening.

Both matter because a permission screen is a record of intentions. It says what you agreed to at some point, possibly years ago, possibly while trying to get past a dialogue box. The indicators say what is happening now — and noticing one at a moment you did not expect it is a better prompt to open Settings than any periodic review.

One habit worth having, since none of this needs to be done often. Open Privacy & Security once, work down the categories rather than through the apps, and turn off anything you cannot explain. Apple’s first-request model means every permission on that list was granted by somebody answering a prompt — “after you grant or deny access, you can change access later” — and the ones worth removing are usually the ones granted in a hurry.

The floors below take it three ways: the screen and how it is sorted, the two live indicators and the report behind them, and the neighbouring settings on the same screen.

What this tower will not do

It will not tell you to audit permissions monthly. Apple provides two live indicators, and noticing one is a better prompt than a diary reminder.

It will not recommend a privacy app. Every control here is one Apple documents, on a screen the phone already has.

And it will not treat tracking as another permission. Apple describes it as following you across other companies’ apps and sites, which is a different thing from reading something on the phone. What holds instead is simple: the description of the Privacy and Security screen as a list of categories showing the apps that requested access, the App Privacy Report and how to turn it off, the requirement that apps ask permission before tracking and the option to stop them asking, and the green camera indicator and location icon are quoted from Apple’s iPhone User Guide, listed below.