Announced at the WWDC21, the ‘App Privacy Report’ is finally released in iOS 15.2 beta. The new privacy feature offers an overview of how many times apps use the granted access to users’ location, camera, microphone, photos, and contacts in the last seven days. In addition, it also shows which other domains are contacted.
iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 introduced the Record App Activity feature in the privacy settings, allowing people to save a summary of sensor, data, and internet access by apps on their device.
In iOS 15.2 beta and iPadOS 15.2 Beta, this activity is presented in Settings in a new UI called App Privacy Report. This is a great opportunity to review your app’s sensor, data, and internet usage.
This feature can be considered an extension of privacy updates introduced in iOS 14 which notified users when apps copied their information from the clipboard and the green and orange dots appeared when apps accessed the device’s camera and microphone, respectively.
How to enable ‘App Privacy Report’ on iOS 15.2
When iOS 15.2 is released to the public, you will be able to turn on the feature easily.
- Update your iPhone to the latest iOS 15.2 version.
- Tap on the Settings app > Privacy.
- In the Privacy menu, tap on the ‘App Privacy Report’ button at the bottom of the UI.
- Select the ‘Turn On App Privacy Report’ option to get a detailed overview of access to camera, location, photos, and microphone by each app in the ‘Data & Sensor Access’ section.
- When enabled, swipe up the App Privacy Report UI to see the list of ‘most contacted domains’ as well.
Other privacy updates released in iOS 15 are on-device speech recognition, Siri requests are entirely processed on the iPhone by default, new Mail privacy protection prevents the sender from knowing if the email has been opened and hides IP addresses. Apple says all the privacy features are designed to protect users’ information.
