How to Recover Deleted Photos on iPhone and Android
A deleted photo is not gone for 30 days on either platform. On an iPhone it sits in the Recently Deleted album, which Apple locks behind Face ID or To
Editorial Team · 2026-09-23
Which Permissions to Revoke on a New Phone, in Order
By Editorial Team · published 2026-09-23 · updated 2026-09-23
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Do not go through permissions app by app — go through them permission by permission. Both platforms have a screen that lists every app holding a given permission, and reading it that way takes ten minutes and exposes the things you would never have looked for: the game with the microphone, the shopping app tracking you in the background. Android calls it the permission manager, Apple splits the same idea across Privacy and Security. Work down this order — location, microphone and camera, contacts, then tracking — and the phone is set up properly before you install anything else.
Before you start
Find the two screens. On Android it is "Settings" → "Security and Privacy" → "Privacy" → "Permission manager", which lists each permission with the apps that hold it. On an iPhone it is "Settings" → "Privacy and Security", where each category opens the same kind of list.
Understand the middle option before you start switching things off. For location, camera and microphone, Android offers access all the time, only while the app is in use, ask every time, or not at all. Apple offers the same shape of choice plus "Precise Location", which decides whether an app gets your exact position or an approximate one. Almost nothing needs the strictest setting removed entirely; most things need moving one notch down.
Nothing here breaks an app permanently. A permission you revoke is re-requested the next time the app genuinely needs it.
Step 1. Location, and the word "always"
Open the location list and read the "all the time" group. This is where the real leakage is: an app with background location reports where you are when you are not using it.
Almost nothing belongs there. Navigation while driving, a fitness tracker recording a route with the screen off, and a family locator like Life360 are the honest cases — Life360 exists to share a position continuously, so background access is the feature rather than a surprise. Everything else goes to "only while using the app".
Then turn off Precise Location on an iPhone for anything that does not need a street address. A weather app works perfectly with an approximate position, and so does most shopping and news.
Step 2. Microphone and camera
Open both lists and ask one question per app: have I ever used this app to record something?
Games, keyboards, shopping apps and social feeds are the ones to look at hard. TikTok needs both when you record a video and neither when you only watch, and the same logic applies to every social app on the phone — grant it at the moment you first record, not in advance. Both platforms show a dot or a coloured indicator whenever the microphone or camera is live, so you will see it if an app genuinely needs what you took away.
While you are here, check photos. Both systems now let an app see only the pictures you pick rather than the whole library, and for anything that is not a gallery or an editor, selected photos is the correct setting. Google Photos is one of the few apps that legitimately needs the full library, because managing and backing up the library is its whole job. Give Google Photos full access and a photo editor selected access, and you have the split right: one app curating everything, everything else seeing only what you hand it.
Step 3. Contacts, and then tracking
Contacts is the permission with the worst ratio of usefulness to exposure: granting it hands over other people's names and numbers, not just your own data. Revoke it from everything that is not a messenger, a dialler or an email client.
Then close the advertising route. On an iPhone, "Settings" → "Privacy and Security" → "Tracking" holds "Allow Apps to Request to Track"; switching it off means apps stop asking and stop receiving the identifier used to follow you between apps. The equivalent on Android sits in the privacy settings as the advertising ID, which can be deleted outright.
Finish on the App Privacy Report on iOS, which shows what each app has actually touched over the past week. It is the only screen on either platform that tells you what happened rather than what is permitted.
If it does not work
An app stops working after you revoke something. Open it and use the feature that needs the permission; it will ask again, and you can grant it at that moment with the right scope.
Permissions came back on their own. They do not, but an app update can ask again and a tap-through grants it. Both systems also reset permissions for apps you have not opened in months — Android exposes this as pausing app activity if unused, which is worth leaving on.
You cannot find the permission manager. Manufacturer skins move it. Search the settings app for the word permission rather than hunting through menus.
An app demands a permission to start at all. Some do, usually without cause. That is a reason to reconsider the app, not to grant background location to a torch.
Bottom line
Go permission by permission, not app by app, and spend the time on the three lists that matter: location set to all the time, microphone and camera, contacts. Then switch off cross-app tracking and leave the automatic reset of unused apps on. Ten minutes on a new phone saves you from the one setting nobody ever finds later — the app that has been reporting your position in the background since the day you installed it.
