Limiting access to your personal information and devices is critical to ensuring your privacy isn’t compromised online, and allour favorite Android phonesprovide granular controls for device permissions to keep you safe. Common permission controls, like those for location, camera, and microphone, are app-specific and independent of each other. Popular internet browsers offer similar permission controls on a per-site basis, and Google Chrome for Android is now improving with support for one-time permissions.
Permissions on Android are a successful step towards protecting your privacy. In the last few years, Google has improved these settings with visual indicators in the status bar when your camera or mic is accessed in the background, and options which limit apps to collecting your approximate location. Chrome for Android is one of thebest web browserson the OS, and is also governed by the same system-level permissions.
Besides Android’s controls, Chrome for Android also has website specific controls for aspects such as push notifications and other device features. These toggles are available in the three-dot overflow menu underSettings→Site settings, but they are mere on-off switches. Chrome fordesktop supports one-time permissionsfor websites since version 116 was released in August last year, and similar controls are now headed for the Android version.
An example of a one-time permissions prompt on Chrome for desktop
Popular Chrome feature spotter@Leopeva64 on X(formerly Twitter) recently spotted Google developing one-time site permissions in the latest Chrome Canary build for Android. A flag controls this feature in version 122 of the browser, which is still in active development. So, it’s no surprise that enabling the flag doesn’t work.
chrome://flags/#one-time-permission
That said, Leopeva shared a quick video demo of what permissions should look like once that feature is integrated into Chrome. When a website requests access to a feature protected by site settings, you will see a window with three options —Allow this time,Allow on every visit, andDon’t allow. While the last option is self-explanatory, the first one is new, and would give the websites access to permission only for the current session. The other option,Allow on every visit, would only grant websites access to your sensitive information while you’re actively using them, ensuring an uncompromising user experience which doesn’t take its toll on your privacy.
Since this new flag-controlled feature is a part of Chrome Canary, there’s a chance Google won’t include it in the stable release until it is perfectly functional. However, the company cannot ignore user privacy on the web, and this setting ought to be high up on Google’s priorities. We hope to see it when version 122 goes stable in a few months' time.
