Google removes ‘Permissions’ part of apps in the Play Store

Last year, Google announced a major improvement for the Play Store, the so-called privacy labels. With these labels, you can see what data an app or game collects from you and decide whether to download the app based on that. As a result of this improvement, Google is now also making a different decision.

Privacy labels provide more insight

Google is tinkering with its app store and that does not always benefit user-friendliness. The new privacy labels that can be seen with apps in the Google Play Store and give you insight into what data a particular app collects about you and what for, are a good step. These labels are part of the Data safety section in the Play Store and we can find the labels in the app store under Data security† The labels show you exactly from an app what kind of data this app collects about you and for what purpose. It must also be clear whether the data is encrypted and whether the data can be deleted.

Permissions are gone

On the other hand, Google also takes, for some people, less logical steps. For example, the Play Store category is not visible with every app and for some it is the part Updated on disappeared. That also applies to the part Permissions† It is no longer visible at all, at least here on the Androidworld editors.

Thanks to the part Permissions in the Play Store you could see in advance at a glance which permissions an app needed. Mishal Rahman (via: XDA) found out that Google has removed the permissions on all app listings. It is unknown why Google removed this part. It may be temporary, but the Data Security section in the Play Store may be the replacement for Permissions. The information in that section is perhaps more understandable for the average user, because it also provides explanations about why an app needs access to your location, for example.

Do you miss the old overview? Then you can still view the permissions in alternative app stores such as the Aurora Store. Did you use this part in the Play Store a lot? Let us know in the comments.