App Privacy Report
One of Apple’s biggest privacy features for 2021 is a new “App Privacy Report” that will provide some actual insights into what an app may be doing on your iPhone or iPad.
This is a considerable step beyond the App Privacy Labels that Apple introduced to the App Store last year. Those relied entirely on self-reporting by developers to indicate what data is collected, and while they’re still useful to help you decide whether you want to download an app in the first place, iOS 15 will show you what the app is actually doing once it’s on your device.
This will include things like seeing how often an app has accessed your location, camera, or microphone, as well as sensitive data like photos and contacts. It will also provide tracking similar to what’s already available in Safari’s new Privacy Reports to show what other domains your apps are contacting, helping you to identify how many trackers are working away behind your back.
This one definitely looks like it’s going to be an iOS 15.1 or iOS 15.2 addition, as Apple notes that it’s “Coming in a software update to iOS 15.”