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How to enable or disable App Permissions on the Android M Developer Preview [VIDEO]

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Google was met with a round of applause during their keynote yesterday when they announced Android M would give users more control over the device permissions apps can request. The new system allows you to grant or revoke access on a granular basis, so you choose whether to grant an app access to the microphone, or your camera, or your location or contacts.

Those who have flashed the Android M developer preview will be able to start controlling permissions right away, even in apps that haven’t been designed for it. Here’s how you can go about doing that.

  1. To start, head to Settings > App and find an app which you want to work with. Select it.
  2. Tap App Permissions on the App Info screen.
  3. You will see a list of permissions the app requests, and whether those permissions are toggled on or off. Tap the toggle to customize the setting.

Note that you may get a warning letting you know that some apps which don’t natively implement the new permissions might break as a result of disabling or enabling. If that happens, just use the steps above to go back and turn the permission back on. The only thing left to do is to rejoice now that you have the final say over which device functions an app is allowed to use.

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

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11 Comments

  1. Android…….. Leading in innovation !

    1. We can’t take credit for this. Apple has been individually asking for user input on permissions for a while.

      1. Did you not get the sarcasm in his post? It was practically overflowing.

        1. I assumed it was a general snag at Android innovation for M, but in reality the “innovation” started with Apple.

          As far as I recall it’s pretty annoying to get constant pop ups for permissions when you’re just trying to use an app quickly.

          1. It’s not that bad. The pop ups usually appear when the app try to access the service for the first time. I don’t recall Facebook Messenger asking for location permission other than the first time I opened it after installing.

      2. Yet android still did it first.

        1. I didn’t know that. As far as I knew we got App Ops after Apple was asking for permission.

  2. Why do we have all these instructions for Android M which are probably a year away for 99% of us?

  3. CyanogenMod already gives more control than an I understand Android M will allow.

  4. So what about breaking apps? Google spent a whole year defending their decision not to enable App Ops because they believe Android users are too stupid to realize a camera app needs camera permission, and now they are just going to pretend that never happened?

    1. Yep

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