In this article
A mini app can ask for permission to set the little emoji beside your name, and to keep changing it — to a controller while you are playing, a note while you are listening, a calendar while you are in a meeting.
Every other permission here decides what an app can learn about you. This one decides what it can say about you, to everybody you know.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle See what you are handing over when you agree.
- check_circle Judge which automations are worth it.
- check_circle Put a time limit on what an app sets.
- check_circle Take the permission back.
One approval, and the symbol beside the name becomes something the app maintains.
record_voice_over Lending out a small part of your name
The status sits next to you in every chat list, every member list and every conversation you appear in. It is small, and it is one of the very few pieces of your account that other people see without opening anything. Granting an app the right to change it means those people are now reading something an app wrote.
Most of the time that is harmless and occasionally useful: a symbol that quietly says you are mid-game explains an unanswered message better than an unanswered message does. The failure is that the app has no idea who is looking. The controller you set to amuse friends is also visible to the client waiting on your reply, and nothing about the automation knows the difference.
Two practical things follow. Custom animated statuses are part of the paid subscription, so this whole feature is only available to accounts that have it. And the permission is separate from everything else the app can do — agreeing to it does not give the app access to your messages, and refusing it does not stop the app working.
Three things an app might keep updating
They ask for the same permission and they are not the same decision.
sports_esports The one with the least at stake
library_music Pleasant, and more revealing than it looks
calendar_month Useful to colleagues, unwise to publish
Grant it where the symbol is true, harmless and short-lived. Refuse it where the real cost is the data feeding it.
settings Granting, limiting and revoking
- Read which app is asking The prompt names it, and the name is the decision.
- Ask who will see it Everybody, not the group you had in mind.
- Prefer automations that expire Something ending on its own stays meaningful.
- Refuse anything wanting your calendar The status is small; the access is not.
- Clear a status from your own profile Tapping it lets you remove or replace it.
- Withdraw the permission in privacy settings Connected bots and websites are listed there.
This page grants one narrow right to one app. The curriculum step is the principle underneath it: how to work out what an automation actually needs, why the smallest grant that works is the right one, and what it takes to get a permission back.
At a glance
- 1Emoji status access
Some apps can set your status automatically.
- 2It speaks for you
Everyone sees the status the app sets.
- 3Expiry
Limit how long app-set statuses last.
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