If you’re like most people, you probably use apps on your iPhone and iPad to do things like make calls, check the weather, and get information about the latest events. But what about the apps that don’t have any privacy settings? Some of these apps track your activity even when you’re not using them. For example, Facebook uses your location data to track where you are and what you’re doing. And some apps store data even if you don’t use them. For example, Dropbox stores user data even if you haven’t used it in months. To protect yourself from these types of tracking practices, it’s important to set up privacy settings for each of your apps. Here’s how:

  1. Open the app that you want to protect and click on the three lines in the top left corner of the screen. This will open a dialog box with all of the app’s privacy settings.
  2. In this dialog box, select which type of tracking you want to stop: personalization tracking (tracking where you are and what you’re doing), advertising tracking (tracking which ads are shown to you), or both (tracking both where you are and what you’re doing). If both options are selected, then all of the app’s privacy settings will be applied simultaneously. If personalization tracking is selected, then only that type of tracking will be stopped; advertising tracking will not be stopped. If only advertising tracking is selected, then all app’s privacy settings will be applied but no personalization tracking will be allowed.
  3. Click on OK to close this dialog box and return to normal screen display. Now that your app has its own privacy setting preferences, it can’t track anything else except for personalization Tracking or Advertising Tracking as specified in step 2 above!

How to Record App Activity

As part of a push to give users a greater understanding of how apps use their information, Apple now allows you to record a week’s worth of app activity on your device.

To enable the feature, first ensure you have the latest version of iOS installed, then head to Settings > Privacy and select Record App Activity. All you need to do now is toggle the feature on and wait.

Once enabled your device will track whenever apps access certain types of data (including photos and contacts), sensors and other data sources like the camera and microphone, and network domains including websites that you visit inside of an app.

This should give you a good understanding of what apps are doing with the permissions you have granted them. You can then make better decisions about whether to use certain apps altogether or whether to limit which software can access microphones, GPS location, and your camera.

If you discover that an app is regularly accessing your microphone or camera without a good reason for doing so, you can revoke that app permission entirely. You may discover some apps are sending data to unknown third-party domains (for example, advertising data), and look for alternative apps instead.

Exporting Data and Viewing Your Report

As soon as you start logging data you’ll be able to download a report under Settings > Privacy > Record App Data by tapping the “Save App Activity” button. This will allow you to save a report in the newline-delimited JSON format (NDJSON) which you can open with a text editor.

You can find out more about this file and how to use it over at Apple’s Developer website, but for most users, the NDJSON file isn’t particularly useful.

Fortunately, Apple is working on an upcoming iOS 15 update that will allow users to view the report from the Privacy menu. This will display the information stored in the report in a digestible format, like in Apple’s screenshot below.

You can leave the Record App Data feature running in the background and periodically check in to see if there’s anything amiss. We always recommend conducting regular iOS privacy checkups by reviewing app permissions, but this feature makes it even easier to see the full picture of what your apps are doing with your data.

Full Reports Arrived in iOS 15.2

Apple announced only a “fall 2021” release date for the fleshed-out privacy reports, and they arrived in iOS 15.2, released on December 13, 2021.

This push for greater transparency follows Apple’s move in early 2021 to require App Privacy labels that disclose how an app tracks you as well as how information is linked to you before you download it. Shortly afterward, Google announced that Play Store apps will need to disclose privacy practices too.

RELATED: How to See an iPhone App’s Privacy Details Before Installing It