Google brings clipboard access alerts with Android 12, following Apple’s iOS 14

For several years in the past, Google has been cracking down on clipboard access in Android. The company blocked background apps from reading clipboard data in the Android 10 release, and now in Android 12, Google introduced a setting to display one each time the app accesses the clipboard (even if it is in the foreground) pop-up window.

We reported in April that Google is working on the clipboard access pop-up window in Android 12, which can be accessed from the system’s “Privacy Settings”.

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When enabled, this feature will display a toast message every time the app accesses text, images, or other content in the clipboard. Google confirmed this feature in today’s “Android New Features” discussion and said it can be tried in Android 12 Beta 2.

In most cases, this feature does not seem to be useful because clipboard access has been restricted to the foreground application, but it is very useful for investigating the behavior of the application. The effect may be similar to the background location access notification introduced by Android 10, which highlights how often Instagram and other apps secretly obtain location data.

Read more: Google Android 12 Public Beta 1 released for Pixel phones

Apple introduced a similar feature in iOS 14, which will display a notification when the app reads clipboard data. This feature reveals how often Twitter, Zilow, TikTok, and other apps quietly access the clipboard. It is not clear whether Google will enable alerts in Android 12 by default, just like Apple did in iOS 14.

|Via|