Android 12 could come with a pretty useful privacy feature

One of the features that Apple introduced with iOS 14 came in the form of prompts that informed users whenever an app accessed the phone’s clipboard. This is a feature designed with privacy in mind to let users know if an app might be accessing their phone’s clipboard without their permission.

When iOS 14 first rolled out to developers, many were surprised to find that there were apps that were secretly accessing their phone’s clipboard. Now according to a report from XDA Developers, it seems that Google is “borrowing” the feature from iOS with clipboard access prompts of their own.

Image credit – XDA Developers

As you can see in the screenshots, whenever an app accesses the clipboard, you will get a small toast message that lets you know about it. Interestingly enough, unlike the iOS version, Android 12 will allow users to turn the feature on or off, giving users the choice of whether or not these are alerts that they want to see.

It should be noted that since Android 10, Google has made changes so that apps running in the background cannot access the clipboard, which means that to a certain extent, Android users have been protected for the past couple of versions, but having this feature is still a good thing that we’re sure some users will probably appreciate all the same.

Source: XDA Developers