How to check app permissions on Android

Last updated: September 2026

Android has a screen that lists which apps can use your camera, your microphone and your location. It is easy to find once you know where it is. What almost nobody knows is that there is a second list, holding the permissions that give an app far more reach than the camera does, and the first screen does not mention it exists.

The short answer

On a Pixel or another phone running stock Android, open Settings, then Security & privacy, then Privacy, then Permission manager. Samsung puts the same screen under Settings, then Security and privacy, then Permission manager, without the extra step in the middle.

You get one row per kind of data, each with a count. On a phone here running Android 16 the rows are Calendar, Call logs, Camera, Contacts, Files, Health and fitness, Location, Microphone, Music and audio, Nearby devices, Notifications, Phone, Photos and videos, Physical activity, SMS, and an Additional permissions row at the end. Tap any one of them and you see every installed app split into allowed and not allowed.

That is the answer to the question most people are asking. The rest of this page is the part that screen leaves out.

Checking a single app instead

If you have one app in mind, going the other way round is quicker. Press and hold the app's icon, choose App info, then Permissions. The same screen is at Settings, then Apps, then the app, then Permissions.

This view is worth using even when nothing looks wrong, because it shows the permissions the app asked for and did not get, not just the ones it holds. An app that requested your contacts and was refused tells you something about what it wants to do, and the permission-by-permission screen never shows you that.

The list Android does not put in the permission manager

Everything above is the runtime permission system: the prompts you have answered, all handled in one place. Separately from it, Android has a set of permissions that are granted by a different flow, and they do not appear in the permission manager at all. On the same Android 16 phone they live at Settings, then Apps, then Special app access, and the list there includes:

All files access, which is the whole of your shared storage rather than the photos you picked
Display over other apps, which lets an app draw its own window on top of whatever you are looking at
Notification read, reply & control, which is the full text of every notification you receive
App usage data, which is a record of which apps you open and for how long
Install unknown apps, which is permission to put other software on the phone
Modify system settings, Device admin, Alarms & reminders, Picture-in-picture and about ten more

One more sits somewhere else again. An accessibility service can read the content of every screen you open, in every app, and act on your behalf. It exists so that screen readers and switch controls can work, and it is a real and necessary feature. It is also the single most powerful thing you can hand an app, and you will not find it in the permission manager or in Special app access. It is at Settings, then Accessibility, usually under a heading for downloaded or installed services.

It is worth opening that screen once. Most phones have nothing in it, which takes ten seconds to confirm and is a genuinely useful thing to know.

Holding a permission is not evidence of anything

This is where a lot of advice on this subject goes wrong, and it is worth saying plainly. A camera app holds the camera permission. A map holds your location. A messaging app holds your contacts and your microphone. None of that is a finding. A list that flags every app holding a sensitive permission produces a page of red that means nothing, and the usual result is that you stop reading it.

Two things are actually worth a second look:

A permission that does not fit the app.
A puzzle game that can use the microphone, a wallpaper app that can read your SMS, a flashlight that wants your contacts. The permission is ordinary; the pairing is what is odd. There may well be a dull explanation, and asking is reasonable either way.
Anything from the second list, held by anything.
Screen reading, drawing over other apps, reading every notification and all files access give an app reach over the phone itself rather than over one kind of data. Those are worth knowing about whichever app holds them, precisely because Android files them three levels deep where nobody looks.

Two switches most people never find

On the same Privacy screen as the permission manager there are system-wide Camera access and Microphone access toggles. They cut the hardware off for every app and service at once, whatever each app was individually granted. They are blunt, and that is the point of them.

Android also takes permissions back from apps you have stopped using. On the Android 16 phone here that is at Settings, then Apps, then Unused apps. It works quietly in the background, so an app you last opened a year ago may already hold less than the permission screen led you to expect.

What an app can and cannot do about this

Several apps in this category offer to switch permissions off for you in bulk. The way they do it is by running an accessibility service and driving the Settings screens by remote control, which means granting one app the exact permission described above: the ability to read every screen in every app. For a tool you installed because you were thinking about privacy, that is a strange trade to make, and it is worth knowing it is the trade on offer.

Android reserves turning a permission off to Settings, so an app without that service cannot do it for you, and any app that claims otherwise is either using accessibility or is not telling you the truth. What an app can honestly do is the reading and the explaining: pull the two lists together, put them in plain words, sort out what is unremarkable from what is unusual, and then hand you off to the right Settings page in one tap.

Where the menu names came from

Every path and list on this page was read off a phone running Android 16, not copied from another article. Manufacturers rename these screens and move them, so if a step does not match your phone, the search box at the top of Settings will find "Permission manager" and "Special app access" by name.