As Google continues to upgrade its privacy and security policies, ‘s is now making a major change to Android that enhances the capabilities of Android apps to all other apps you have installed on your device.
In a recent announcement for developers, Google has released an update to its policy that “wide app visibility ”in Android 11 or higher. Broad visibility of the app is a feature that allows apps to query your device and possibly see what other apps you have installed. Google says it considers data about other apps installed on a device as sensitive information and is making this change to increase user privacy.
More specifically, Google says that any app that “can work with a more Explanation of the visibility of targeted reach packagesMay not use the call QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES, which returns a list of all apps on your Android device, while broad app visibility “is limited to specific use cases that require familiarity with and / or interoperability with all apps on the device for the app to function.”
The types of apps that are allowed to have wide app visibility include apps like file managers, browsers, antivirus apps, and others that simply can’t work without deeper access to other apps on your device, which means it’s especially important to make sure that these kinds of apps come from safe and trusted places.
Additionally, Google says that in the future, developers will need to properly justify the use of broad app visibility calls or remove the app’s permission to see a device’s app manifest. Starting April 1, Google will give developers a 30-day grace period to edit or update their apps in response to the new policy. However, developers who fail to comply by May 5 run the risk of having their apps removed or removed from the Google Play Store.
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Over the past year, Google has been slowly working hard on app permissions within Android, and this recent move to severely limit broad app visibility is another small but important step to increase the security of our apps and devices. And with Google pushing developers to build apps meant for Android 11 and above starting in November, we should see a notable improvement in Android security in the future.