Posted November 17, 2024 by gardenapple
Prior to Android 11, every app could access the list of installed apps on your device. This was generally bad for privacy, since, for example, a social media app could theoretically detect that you install specific games, apps etc. and use this for advertising or tracking.
However, Mitch has always used this data for legitimate purposes (which is, managing your installed apps) and has never sent this data to anybody.
With the recent 2.3 update, Mitch jumped from targetting Android 10, to Android 14, so now stricter privacy measures are applied, meaning that Mitch could no longer access info about your installed apps. Hence, Mitch needs to request special permission (QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES) to continue to function.
TL;DR effectively nothing changes and user privacy is not affected in any way, only that Mitch has to ask permission to do things that all apps used to be able to do regardless.
(However, this new permission is granted by the system automatically, so from the user’s perspective, you won’t notice anything. Note that Google Play rejects certain apps that request QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES, but if you install apps from outside Google Play, be aware that some permissions may be granted to them automatically, such as the aforementioned QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES)