Upcoming Android P will Block Background Apps From Accessing the Camera

A recent report reveals that Android P may block background apps from accessing your smartphone camera.

Android – the most popular and highly used smartphone OS has started rolling out it’s latest version – “Android Oreo” in the second half of 2017. With only a few mobiles seeing Android 8.0 Oreo ‘in the flesh’. As we already knew that Google started working on Android P. Though we don’t have more solid information about the next release of Android – we heard that some Notch optimization and access to undocumented API could get blocked.

As spotted by XDA developers, a recent commit on AOSP appears to indicate that Android P could implement a rule that would prevent background apps from accessing the camera. The rules will be applied to Application UID, which is an unique identifier that Android Associates with the Apps when it is installed. Thus Android blocks access to the camera, Whenever a UID becomes idle.

It’s a great feature if get introduced, as There is a possibility that a malicious app could have access to a device’s camera without the user’s knowledge. That’s why, on most laptops, and in webcameras, there’s usually a little light next to the webcam that turns on whenever it’s in use. But on phones and tablets, there’s no such physical indicator, Thus it gets hard to know that a device camera is actively being used. Thus, by natively blocking background apps from accessing the camera altogether, most users’ privacy will arguably be much better safeguarded.

But of course, there might be an impact on apps that rely on covert capturing of images. As there are more questions and consequences of this changes, do wait to hear more about them in the upcoming Google I/O 2018.