Which app permissions should I turn off?

Apps ask for permissions at install, when you are focused on something else and inclined to agree. Reviewing them later, calmly, by category, is a different exercise and takes about twenty minutes.

Step by step

1. Review by permission, not by app.Both iPhone and Android let you see every app holding a given permission in one list. Going through 'which apps have my location' is far faster and more revealing than opening forty apps in turn.
2. Ask one question about each.Does this app need this access to do the thing I actually use it for? A photo editor needs photos. A torch app does not need contacts. The question resolves most cases immediately.
3. Set location to while-using almost everywhere.Very few apps genuinely need location in the background. Navigation and fitness tracking do. Retail, social and news apps do not, and background location is both a privacy and a battery cost.
4. Turn off precise location where approximate will do.Both platforms now offer approximate location. Weather, news and local search work fine with it, and it stops an app knowing which building you are in.
5. Audit microphone and camera hardest.These are the most sensitive and the least often genuinely needed. Both systems show an indicator when either is active — worth noticing which apps trigger it.
6. Be careful with contacts.Granting contacts access shares other people's details, not only your own. It is the permission with the widest effect on people who never agreed to anything.
7. Use limited photo access.Both platforms let you grant access to selected photos rather than the whole library. For an app that needs one image occasionally, that is the right setting.
8. Check what runs in the background.Background app refresh and background data both let an app work when you are not using it. Turning them off for most apps saves battery as well as reducing activity you cannot see.
9. Look at notification and accessibility permissions too.Accessibility permissions are very powerful — they let an app read the screen and act on your behalf. Grant those only to apps you genuinely trust and know why they need it.
10. Turn things off and see what breaks.Almost nothing does. Modern apps ask again when they need something, so revoking a permission is reversible in one tap at the moment it matters.
11. Delete apps you do not use.The fastest permission review. An app you have not opened in a year holds every permission you granted it and provides nothing.
12. Recheck after major updates.Updates occasionally reset or add permissions. A quick look through the location list every few months catches it.

Tips

• Both platforms produce a privacy report showing which apps accessed what and when. It is more informative than the settings list and worth looking at once.
• If an app refuses to work without a permission it plainly does not need, that is useful information about the app.
• Do this on a tablet and a child's device too — those are often set up quickly and never reviewed.

Common mistakes

• Granting location always instead of while using — It lets the app build a continuous picture of where you go, and it costs battery. Very few apps genuinely need it.
• Granting contacts access to social and utility apps — It shares other people's names, numbers and addresses — data that was never yours to give.

If it doesn't work

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