If you’re lucky enough to be in the first batch of recipients, you might already have Android 11 up and running on your phone; if not, it’ll be rolling out to your handset in the weeks and the months ahead.
As with most major Android updates, security and privacy features get plenty of attention, and there are now more integrated tools and options than ever to keep you and your smartphone safe from snoops and data thieves. Let’s take a look at them.
One-Time Permissions
You’re likely familiar with the process of granting apps permission to parts of your phone like the microphone and camera, but with Android 11 there’s a new setting to be aware of: A one-time permission that means that an app can use your camera (or microphone, or location) for now, but will have to ask again next time it wants access.
It’s perfect for apps that you don’t altogether trust or that you don’t use very often—it’s less suitable for apps that you always use (approving Instagram’s access to the camera every time you want to take a snap would quickly get tiresome).
You’ll see the new option appear on key permissions—camera, microphone, location—when apps need them, so choose wisely. Android 11 has another new and related feature that’s less obvious: If you don’t use an app for a few months, all its previous permissions will be reset, and it will need to request them again.
Permissions will be reset on apps you don’t use.
Screenshot: David NieldScoped Storage
Not very exciting from an end-user perspective, but important in the behind-the-scenes security of Android 11, scoped storage means that apps have access to their own silos of data, and aren’t necessarily allowed to access silos from other apps, which in theory should keep your sensitive information more secure.
It’s a somewhat controversial change: Apps might want to get data from other apps or services for a variety of reasons, such as an image editing app accessing your photo gallery, for example. Scoped storage doesn’t make that impossible, but developers have to jump through more hoops and abide by Android’s rules to make it happen.
In terms of what you’ll see while you’re running Android 11, this shouldn’t make much of a difference: Your device will automatically be safer because apps will have greater restrictions on them. If you do see apps put up permission requests for storage folders on your device, just double-check what exactly they’re asking for before deciding to allow or block it.
Background Location Access
There’s one more permission-related feature in Android 11 that’s worth mentioning, and that’s background location access—apps being able to track your location in the background. When an app first asks for permission to track location, the option to enable this all the time (even when the app isn’t running) isn’t available: You need to visit the app’s specific page in Android Settings to do this. The extra steps should, in theory, make us all think twice about granting background location access to an app, rather than just automatically tapping to grant permission out of habit.
