Android 12 to bring iOS 14 clipboard access prompt feature

The gap between iOS and Android in terms of features has reduced over the years.

Android 12 release is expected to be somewhere around October. Ahead of the stable rollout, Google has officially released the Android 12 developer preview. XDA Developers, in their report, have listed some of the key Android 12 features, one of which is copied from iOS 14.

The gap between iOS and Android in terms of features has reduced over the years. Both companies have brought features to their respective operating systems, which is either an obvious copy or a slightly-tweaked version. While Apple brought Widgets to iOS, Google copied a few privacy-centric IOS features for Android 11. In the case of Android 12, Google could introduce the clipboard access prompt feature.

The report includes screenshots of how the clipboard access prompt feature will work. As of now, users can choose to enable or disable the feature. When an app, for example, Chrome, accesses the clipboard, the OS will show a prompt message that reads “Chrome pasted text you copied”.

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iOS users have had the feature since iOS 14. When Apple rolled out the feature, several apps were found snooping on the clipboard. Apps like LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok were caught accessing the clipboard without the user’s consent. TikTok, in its defence, said that the issue is due to a “feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behaviour,” and it has “already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion.” 

LinkedIn, on the other hand, acknowledged the issue and said that the team has traced this activity to a path of the code that does an equality check between the clipboard contents and the currently typed content in a text box.