When installing apps, it is common to encounter apps that seek permission to access your location. Often, permissions are granted without much thought because some apps on an Android device require it. For certain apps like Google Maps, it is essential to grant location permissions for them to function correctly. At the same time, there are many apps that have no legitimate reason to know your location, such as calculator apps, WhatsApp, Facebook, and other programs that can perform their tasks without needing access to your geographic location. Therefore, we advise you to reconsider the apps that are granted such permission and determine if they truly need it or if there are other motives!
Learn about apps that use your geographic location from your device
Note that these steps work perfectly on Android versions 6.0 to 8.0, and they will be similar for other versions of Android as well. All you have to do is go to Settings and click on the Apps menu – Apps. Doing so will open a list of installed apps on your mobile device. In some phones, you may find the Permissions tab before entering the apps.
Also read: Know which apps are running in the background and slowing down your phone
After entering the list of installed apps on your device, click on the menu icon (the three dots in the top corner) and select the App Permissions option. This will open a new screen with all the different permissions available and used on your device, including sensors, calendar, contacts, camera, microphone, and also location, which we will focus on in our case today.
Upon accessing the list of apps that have been granted access to your location, you will find an option for enabling or disabling access to the location. For apps that can access your location, the toggle switch will be turned on (blue) and off (gray) for apps that cannot access your location.
Through this menu containing all programs that access your location, you can control them all and review the apps that use this permission. There is no need to grant it to them unnecessarily. You will find many apps that intrude on this feature, and we do not know what they are doing in the background, like a calculator app or even the gallery and many others. Do apps like these really need your location? You can disable the permission for such apps and let them work for apps that truly need it, like maps or weather apps for their actual need for this permission to display the weather status and others.
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Learn about apps that use your geographic location from an external program
While the process may seem somewhat simple, there are some external apps that can help control location permissions on Android devices. One of these apps is Ops, but unfortunately, this app only works with devices that have root permissions. If your device is not rooted, check out one of our articles on this issue or follow the first step as explained above.
There are many permissions that apps may require during each installation process. You should base the permissions you grant on your trust in the app and usually take some time to study the permissions requested by the app during installation, rather than granting it without being 100% sure of what you are agreeing to.
As for apps that are granted location permission and any type of permission requests, make sure you can reasonably link the permission you are looking for to the feature that the app is executing. This way, you will ensure that you are granting access to only the essential features for optimal app performance and not just continuously clicking the grant button to get rid of the interface and open the app and start using it, then end up facing many problems.
