Google to roll back app permissions list on Play Store

New Delhi: After initially removing them in place of Data Safety labels, tech giant Google has now said that it is rolling back the app permissions list on the Play Store. The tech giant, however, did not specify when the permission section will be back on the Play Store, reports TechCrunch. "Privacy and transparency are core values in the Android community. We heard your feedback that you find the app permissions section in Google Play useful, and we have decided to reinstate it. The app permissions section will be back shortly," Android Developers wrote on Twitter."

The Data safety section provides users with a simplified view of how an app collects, shares, & secures user data, but we also want to make app permissions information easily viewable for users to understand an app's ability to access specific restricted data and actions too," it added. Google launched the Data Safety labels on Play Store in April after announcing them last year. ()

Apple, on the other hand, launched its own data privacy labels in 2020, showing what data an app can collect from people. As Google was rolling out the Data Safety label across apps over the last few months, several blogs and researchers noted that Google also removed the permissions section, allowing one to see what kind of data access an app has on your phone from the Play Store. ()

Earlier in the month, Google confirmed it removed the permissions section from the Play Store on July 13, but it did not say why it had been removed. The tech giant said it is being reinstated based on the feed from the Android community but did not elaborate on why it was removed in the first place.

Users could still go to the apps menu on their phone and check out permissions for the individual app, but it's not just reflected on the install page on Google's app store. But the new change will let them see both Data Safety labels and app permissions directly from the Play Store.