Anyone else being harassed and annoyed by Android snooping?
Apps not used in three months have permissions removed.
Software and Apps are tools. You buy a extra large screwdriver and put in your toolbox. You certainly expect it to be there whenever you fix your car. It may be 2 months, 6 months or even a year later. But you bought that screwdriver for a reason. You need it.
Has anyone found a way to remove Android monitoring of Apps usage and crippling them?
I got a notification today that my Guitar tuner App lost its microphone access. Because I sinned and didn’t use it for three months. Duh, Covid. I’m not visiting friends houses right now. A tuner App is needed when I’m away from home. I don’t want to carry my strobe tuner everywhere I go.
This has been annoying me since Android 11. I definitely want App monitoring and crippling turned off.
Early article. This feature is definitely in 11. Makes my life miserable.
But you just get an automatic message when you do open the app that it needs the permission, and you are automatically directed to the relevant settings page. I can see how you might find it slightly annoying, but I’m not seeing why it’s a big issue.
Yeah, I got something this morning about the Photos app on my tablet and permissions getting auto-revoked because I hadn’t used it in months. No big deal though, as mentioned, if I open an app and it needs to access something, it’s going to ask/tell me. I’ve never had an app that needed to be reinstalled to get permissions back but there’s a lot of apps out there so maybe it happens… just not to me. So I guess I prefer the cleanup method if I have any opinion at all.
I don’t see it as snooping; the device has always known when the last time you opened an app was (or your PC the last time you opened a file). It’s just now using that information for this.
Right now, it’s at the App level. I turned off the App usage monitoring for my tuner. Its usage is always infrequent.
I’m just accustomed to PC’s. I load up a new pc with all my favorite software. I may only use my Adobe Premiere video editor once a year. But its there when I need it.
You might have given location or microphone access to some app that you tried out and then just stopped using. I quite like the idea of the clean-up process.
I guess more people would rather think “This app I installed a year ago can no longer use the mic to listen to things around the tablet” than “This app I installed a year ago will need me to tap Yes to re-allow it to use the mic”. That and general tidiness and not having umpteen near-abandoned apps all able to access your mic or location or files, etc.
Again, I don’t have a strong opinion about it so I’m not going to go to the mat over this “feature” to defend it. But if I had to pick one or the other, I’d go with cleaning up the permissions.
But you are basing this all on the mistaken premise that this introduces a requirement to reinstall the app. It does not - it’s a few seconds to reset the permissions. There may be other reasons why you need to update software when you haven’t used it for months.
This. Adobe apps are some of the worst at background processes.
Yes, if it removes those permissions, it should just ask for them back when you eventually launch that app again. And assuming you never do, it never has permissions again until you get around to uninstalling.
It doesn’t seem useful to me in its current state. Unless it’s an app that begins at boot and runs in the background, it can’t use those permissions until I start the app. And then you just get a prompt right when you want to use the app annoying people and leading to them just quickly allowing all the permissions.
And, if it does run in the background, then I don’t think you get the prompt at all. But those are the apps that matter. But you also don’t want them to suddenly stop working, so you’d need a notification that let you close it.
The only place where this feature seems good is if the app updates in the background and changes how it uses certain permissions. But then I’d like to be told about the update.
I suspect it isn’t a security thing. It just keeps things tidy to prevent breakage or something. I don’t see ithelping much with how people actually use apps.
Not only do you not need to reinstall the app, but you should be able to turn off the permissions removal review.
Settings → Apps → {specific app} → scroll down & slide the toggle off for “Remove permissions & free up space” under Unused apps
What I find creepy is apps that start up on their own & are collecting something. Google Pay & Keep Notes came preinstalled, I’ve never used either, I’ve deleted the data & forced stopped both apps. Yet any time I go in & look, the app is running & there’s some quantity of data shown in storage despite no permissions granted. Why is it starting & what data is it getting? I really should just delete both.
