Permio: App Permission Check

Permio reads what every app on your phone is allowed to reach and tells you in plain words. Not permission names, but what they actually let an app do: see through your camera, hear the room you are in, read your texts, know where you have been.

WHAT YOUR APPS CAN REACH

Everything on your phone is grouped by what it can do to you, with a count next to each one. Tap Microphone and you see exactly which apps can record audio right now. Tap any app and you see everything it can reach, and everything it asked for and did not get.

WORTH A LOOK

Holding a permission is not proof that an app is doing anything wrong. A camera app needs the camera, and a map needs your location. Permio only raises two kinds of thing. First, a capability that is unusual for that kind of app, such as a game that can use the microphone. Second, the handful of powers that give an app reach over the whole phone: reading your screen, drawing over other apps, reading every notification, reaching every file, or installing other apps. Those are surfaced whatever kind of app holds them, because Android buries them and almost nobody knows they are switched on.

WHAT IT ASKS OF YOU

Nothing. Permio requests no Android permissions at all. It has no account, no advertising, no analytics, and no internet access, so nothing it learns about your phone is able to leave your phone. It is never written down either: the results live in memory while the app is open and are gone when you close it.

IT DOES NOT USE ACCESSIBILITY

Some apps in this category run an accessibility service so they can switch permissions on your behalf. That service can read every screen you open, in every app. For a tool about privacy that is a contradiction, so Permio does not do it, and it cannot turn a permission off for you. Android reserves that to Settings. What it does instead is take you to the exact Settings page in one tap, with the app and the permission already in front of you.

WHAT IT CANNOT SEE

Permio lists apps that have an icon in your launcher. Seeing every package on the device needs a permission Google reserves for antivirus and file manager apps, and asking for it when a narrower method exists is not something a privacy tool should do. Preinstalled system apps are hidden by default and can be switched on from the menu.

Permio is a tool for asking good questions about your own phone. It makes no accusations, and it calls no app dangerous.