Android 4.3 comes with a hidden app permission manager

Android 4.3 will come with a permissions manager built within its folds. While most custom Android ROMs come with a such a manager for users who want the freedom of customising app permissions as they see fit, stock Android OS’ did not give that kind of leeway. This seems to have changed with Android 4.3, according to Android Police.

The application is still hidden, though, probably because the company is working out the finer details. From what can be seen right now, the permissions manager is called “App Ops” and will let users selectively disable certain permissions that are given to apps. This is ideal for users who sometimes have to put up with misbehaving apps which constantly ping out location details while draining the phone’s battery in a few hours. 

The App Ops icon, which can be found in the settings folder of Android 4.3

From the screenshots seen, there is an App Ops icon, which when tapped will open up a list of all installed apps as well as the permissions they use. The list is categorised into 4 user-friendly tabs which list out apps based on functions. Thus, the app manager breaks up all the apps into “location,” “personal,” “messaging,” and “device” sections, so users can easily segregate their apps and figure out which permission they are using. The app also comes with a timestamp which displays when the app last used a permission.

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App Ops breaks all the apps into four separate tabs

Once users select an app, they will see a screen displayed with an easy on/off option showing up next to each permission. So if users don’t want their Facebook application to know their location, they can easily hit the “off” button. This will not change the way the app works, it will just limit the amount of information that the app has. The screen displayed will also show the last time each individual permission was used.

All the individual permissions that App Ops lets users switch on and off

There are some faults in the system. Even though users may have disabled some permissions for an app, for example Facebook, when the app is launched on the main dashboard, it will not show any notification message saying that permissions have been limited. This might make it confusing for users to remember what permissions they might have disabled, unless they launch the App Ops manager.

Each permission that users want to modify has to be launched by the app first.

Another problem faced is the list of permissions itself. Most of the permissions have to have been used by the app at some point, in order to get them displayed on App Ops. Taking up the Facebook example again, it seems that permissions that were given when the app was first launched, the permissions which were given when a user’s contacts were imported, and the permissions granted when a user may have posted a picture taken from the camera, are all different, and have to be hunted down first. After that, owing to App Ops display issue, it seems like users will have to make the app use the said permissions first, in order to disable them. All told, that is a lot of work, and it is hoped that Google will work on simplifying the app permission method.