How to Find Out Which Apps Have Access to Your Location in Android

While installing apps, it is common to encounter apps that seek permission to access your location. Often you give permission without really thinking it through because you need some app installed on your Android. For certain apps, like Google Maps, it is perfectly fine for them to have location permissions. However, there are many apps that have totally no reason to have knowledge of your location, such as a caculator app.

In this article we will show you how you can find out which apps in your Android phone have location access permission and how you can disable their location permission.

Also read: How to Restrict Android App Permissions

How to check apps with location permission

Note that these steps work perfectly on Android versions 6.0 to 8.0.0. They will also be similar on other versions of Android.

To check the apps with location permission, follow these few steps:

1. Go to Settings on your Android phone.

2. Click on the Apps menu. Doing this opens a list of apps installed on your mobile device.

3. Click the menu sign (the three dots at the top-left corner), and select the “App permissions” option. Doing this opens a new screen with all different permissions that are available and used on your device.

4. Click on “Location.” This will open up all the apps that could require location access on your mobile device.

In front of each app will be a switch that is either on or off. For apps with access to your location, the switch will be on (blue) and off (grey) for apps without access to your location.

5. Scroll down the list and either turn on or off access to your location.

Using Apps

While this feels like a fairly straightforward process, there are a few third-party apps that could help with controlling location permission on your android devices. One of these apps is App Ops. You must note that this app will require you to root your device first. If you do not have a rooted device, then your best bet will be to go through your Android settings as explained above.

Wrap-up

There are a lot of permissions that apps may require during installation. The permissions you grant will depend on you and usually should be governed by how much you can trust the app. As a rule, you may want to take time to study which permissions the app is requesting during installation rather than confirming without being 100% sure of what you are agreeing to.

For apps with location permission and any kind of permission request, make sure you can reasonably connect the permission it is seeking to a feature it performs. That way you will be sure you are granting access for only the features that are essential to the apps’ optimal performance.