How to Use App Privacy Report in the iOS 15.2 Beta

Apple in the iOS 15.2 beta introduced App Privacy Report, a feature that was first shown off at WWDC. App Privacy Report is designed to provide users with information on how often apps are accessing sensitive info provided to them through privacy permissions, such as location, contacts, camera, microphone, and photos.

App Privacy Feature 2
Apple also displays network activity, letting you know which domains apps are contacting in the background.

How to Turn on App Privacy Report

App Privacy Report can be enabled in the Settings app by following these instructions.

  1. Open up the Settings app.
  2. Scroll down and tap on Privacy.
  3. In the Privacy section of the Settings app, scroll down and tap on App Privacy Report. app privacy report turn on
  4. Tap on Turn on App Privacy Report.

If you already had "Record App Activity" enabled in the iOS 15/iOS 15.1 updates, App Privacy Report will be automatically on and it will already be populated with data. If you did not, you may need to use apps and websites for a few minutes before you start seeing data.

Using App Privacy Report

Apple shows data from the last seven days, and the app is split up into several sections to make it easier to get to what you want to know.

app privacy report camera

Data & Sensor Access

In this section, Apple provides a list of apps that have accessed sensors and data granted to them through privacy permissions, so your most sensitive information.

app privacy report data
Data & Sensor access will tell you when apps have accessed the following:

  • Contacts
  • Location
  • Photos
  • Camera
  • Microphone
  • Media Library

If you tap on an individual app and then tap on the permission that you want to view more about, App Privacy Report will give you a list of every time the app accessed the data in question.

App Network Activity

With App Network Activity, you can view a list of all of the different domains that your apps have contacted across the last seven days.

app privacy report app network
This includes various internal domains used by apps, but it also lets you see what third-party websites and services are accessed, such as tracking or analytics tools.

You can tap on any app in the list to see a rundown of all of the domains that have been contacted. If you have Instagram installed, for example, you'll see URLs for things like DoubleClock, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and more, along with internal Instagram and Facebook URLs.

At the bottom of each app's data, you can also get a list of the web sites that you visited within the app.

Website Network Activity

Website Network Activity is basically identical to App Network Activity, but it shows you all of the domains contacted by the websites that you visited in Safari and other apps.

app privacy report website network activity
This will show you all of the different trackers and analytics sites that websites are using.

Most Contacted Domains

Most Contacted Domains is an aggregated list of the domains that apps have contacted most often, and it is usually populated by various trackers and analytics domains.

app privacy report contacted domains
In this section, you can tap on any of the domains in the list to see which apps or websites used that particular domain.

How to Turn Off App Privacy Report

If you don't want to use App Privacy Report, you can follow these steps:

  1. Open up the Settings app.
  2. Scroll down and tap on Privacy.
  3. In the Privacy section of the Settings app, scroll down and tap on App Privacy Report.
  4. Tap on Turn Off App Privacy Report.

Note that turning off App Privacy Report will delete all collected data. Once it's turned on again, Apple will again begin aggregating data from apps.

Guide Feedback

Have questions about App Privacy Report, know of a feature we left out, or want to offer feedback on this guide? Send us an email here.

Related Forum: iOS 15

Popular Stories

cook trump

Trump Responds to Apple Keeping Diversity Policies

Wednesday February 26, 2025 6:32 am PST by
In an all-caps post on Truth Social today, U.S. President Donald Trump said Apple should fully end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Tim Cook meeting with President Trump in 2017 "APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM," he wrote. Trump's post comes one day after Apple held its annual shareholders meeting, during which a majority of...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
iOS 18

Apple Says iOS 18.4 Will Be Released in April With These New Features

Wednesday February 26, 2025 7:15 am PST by
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April. From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
iPhone Fold Vertical Feature

Apple's 2026 Foldable iPhone Has No Visible Display Crease – Report

Tuesday February 25, 2025 2:58 am PST by
Apple is making significant headway on its long-rumored foldable iPhone, with a new report suggesting the company has achieved a major breakthrough by effectively eliminating the screen crease that plagues current foldable devices. According to Korean publication ETNews, Apple is finalizing its component suppliers for the foldable iPhone, with the selection process expected to be completed...
trump iphone dictation issue

Apple Fixing 'Trump' Dictation Processing Bug

Tuesday February 25, 2025 1:18 pm PST by
Multiple iPhone owners today noticed a pronunciation processing issue that causes the word "Trump" to momentarily show up when using dictation to send a message with the word "racist." In some cases, when speaking the word racist through the iPhone's built-in dictation feature, the iPhone briefly interprets the spoken word as "Trump" and "Trump" text shows up in the Messages app before being ...
airtag orange

AirTag 2 Rumored to Launch in May or June With These New Features

Monday February 24, 2025 6:11 am PST by
Apple plans to launch a second-generation AirTag in May or June this year, according to a post today from a leaker known as Kosutami. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously reported that a new AirTag would be released in mid-2025. May or June would align with that timeframe. Below, we recap three new features rumored for the AirTag 2: With a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, the...
airpods pro purple

Here's When AirPods Pro 3 Are Rumored to Launch

Monday February 24, 2025 9:14 am PST by
According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year. The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time. Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
ios 18 4 carplay

iOS 18.4 Includes a Small But Useful Change for CarPlay

Sunday February 23, 2025 2:23 pm PST by
The first beta of iOS 18.4 is now available, and it includes a small but useful change for CarPlay. As we noted in our list of iOS 18.4 features, CarPlay now shows a third row of icons, up from two rows previously. However, this change is only visible in vehicles with a larger center display. For example, a MacRumors Forums member noticed the change in a Toyota Tundra, which can be equipped...

Top Rated Comments

BWhaler Avatar
44 months ago
Great feature. Thank you Apple.

Next release, please give us:

1. iCloud full encryption
2. IP filtering for apps, not just Safari and Mail
3. Make it impossible for Facebook and Google and the other dark data mining companies to fingerprint our devices.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ILoveCalvinCool Avatar
44 months ago
Does it tell us how often our iCloud photos are being examined?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Populus Avatar
44 months ago
Hey, Juli, I wholeheartedly appreciate all this posts explaining this new privacy focused feature.
As I already said on another post, this will probably make me jump to iOS 15, as I don’t quite trust the Privacy sheets on the App Store. This -I assume- is much more reliable.

Thank you!
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
NightFox Avatar
44 months ago
A good feature, but I think people are overestimating its impact. the vast majority of iPhone users either aren't going to know this feature exists or won't ever use it. Then there's the 'little knowledge is a dangerous thing' - does anyone remember when custom keyboard apps were first allowed and the panic the system access requests caused? It's not always readily apparent when an app legitimately needs access to a resource to work properly.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
zorinlynx Avatar
44 months ago
Holy crap, this is astounding. Aside from the privacy benefits, I can see this being good for helping people track down unusual battery drain. If there's stuff hitting the network in the background that would explain it for a lot of people.

I'm tempted to hop back on the beta train to try this, but will probably wait until b2.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
owidhh Avatar
44 months ago

I tried using this when I first upgrade to iOS 15 but when it came time to checking the data, I had to export it. I didn’t know what application to open it with. And it looked like a bunch of garbled code. Did I do something wrong?
It's in a format called "json" which is the predominant format for exchanging data, can be read by many applications etc. But it's just data.

Now in 15.2, it seems like Apple added functionality that reads this same data and presents it in the GUI, so the set of features is evolving/improving.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)