App Store Privacy Labels Become Mandatory

What Changed

At WWDC in June 2020, Apple announced that App Store product pages would include a new privacy information section, often called a privacy "nutrition label". On September 3, 2020, it published the questions developers would need to answer, and from December 8, 2020, the labels were required for new apps and app updates.^1,2

Each label summarizes the data an app collects, grouped into three categories: data used to track you, data linked to you, and data not linked to you. Developers fill in the label themselves in App Store Connect, including data collected by third-party SDKs in their app.³

Why It Mattered

The labels put tracking in front of users before they install an app, alongside the price and ratings. For the first time, an app's ad and analytics SDKs became part of how it was presented in the store.

They also made developers account for every SDK they shipped, since the label has to include data collected by third-party SDKs as well as the app's own code.³

The weakness was that the labels are self-reported. Oxford researchers who compared 1,759 apps before and after Apple's new rules found the labels "sometimes inaccurate and misleading".⁴ Apple's answer, in 2023, was privacy manifests: files that third-party SDKs must ship with, declaring what they collect, so the information comes from the SDK makers themselves.

Google followed with its own version. From July 20, 2022, every app on Google Play had to complete a Data safety section, showing the data it collects and why, whether it shares data with third parties, and its security practices. Like Apple's labels, developers fill it in themselves.⁵ For apps on both platforms, that means two disclosures to keep in step with the SDKs actually shipped.

The labels arrived just months before App Tracking Transparency, and the two work together. The label tells users, before they install, whether an app tracks them; the prompt then asks permission inside the app.