Google has released the "Automatically reset permissions for unused apps" feature, which is available on all Android 6 and above devices

Automatically "reset permissions for unused apps" is a privacy feature introduced by Google in the Android 11 system to help users automatically limit infrequently used apps. This feature was previously limited to Android 11 and higher, but Google announced on Friday that it will be available in Android 6 and higher.

Regarding the automatic "automatic reset of permissions for unused apps", the official introduction is as follows

• If your app targets Android 11 or higher and hasn't been used in months, the system protects user data by automatically resetting sensitive runtime permissions that the user has granted your app. This action has the same effect as if the user reviewed permissions in system settings and changed your app's access level to Deny. If your app follows best practices for requesting permissions at runtime, you shouldn't have to make any changes to your app. That's because when users interact with features in your app, you should verify that the feature has the permissions it needs.

That is, when you don't use an app for a set period of time, Android will automatically strip the app of all permissions it was previously granted, limiting it from tracking you or accessing data in the background. This is a nice feature for less tech-savvy people who aren't interested in manually organizing the inner workings of their phone. If you open the app again, it can ask for all those permissions again.

Like most new Android features, "Automatically reset permissions for unused apps" is an exclusive feature launched in Android 11 last year. However, the number of users who can actually use this feature is not very large. Since the advent of Android 11, Google has stopped updating the Android version distribution map, so we don't know exactly how many users have upgraded to Android 11 and higher.

Google's decentralization of "automatically reset permissions for unused apps" means that billions of devices around the world running Android 6 and above can get this privacy feature. Even Google's chart from 18 months ago showed that Android 6 and higher devices accounted for 84.9%.