![50.6% of iPhone Users Deny App Permissions [2026]](/_astro/what-percentage-of-users-refuse-app-permissions.D23t-xcO_ZTUxEx.webp)
The median iOS app saw just 49.4% of its users opt in to push notification permission requests in 2024, meaning roughly 50.6% denied the prompt, according to Airship's 2025 Mobile App Push Notification Benchmarks report, which tracked 9 billion app users across thousands of apps. Android users grant the same permission more often, with a 59.5% median opt-in rate, though that lead is narrowing fast now that newer Android versions require the same explicit consent screen Apple has used for years. Push notifications are just one permission type, and the same pattern shows up across location, tracking, and general data-collection requests: most mobile users would rather block a permission, or skip the app entirely, than hand over more access than the task in front of them requires.
How many users deny app permission requests overall?
Push notification consent is the one permission type researchers can measure at scale from real user behavior instead of a survey question, and the data shows denial is closer to a coin flip than an edge case. The median iOS app's opt-in rate sat at 49.4% in 2024, up only 0.3 percentage points from 49.1% in 2023, per Airship's 2025 benchmark report. That means the typical iPhone app keeps roughly half its install base opted out of the one channel most likely to bring a user back after the first session.
Figure 1: iOS denial has held near 51% for two straight years; Android's jumped 11.8 points in a single year. Source: Airship, 2025 Mobile App Push Notification Benchmarks report.
Android told a different story. Its median opt-in rate dropped from 71.3% in 2023 to 59.5% in 2024, which flips into a denial rate that climbed from 28.7% to 40.5% in twelve months. Android has historically let apps send notifications by default, so its opt-in numbers used to sit far above iOS, where Apple has required an explicit yes-or-no prompt since push notifications launched in 2009. That gap is closing because Android 13, released in 2022 and now the target for most new apps, made the notification permission mandatory for the first time, putting Android users through the same deliberate choice iOS users have always faced.
Half of iPhone users and four in ten Android users now decline a permission that most developers treat as a growth-critical default.
How many users avoid or uninstall apps over permissions?
Denial is not limited to a single tap on a single prompt. 86% of mobile users say they avoid downloading an app altogether once they see it asks for what they consider too many permissions, according to GoodFirms' 2025 survey of app users; the publisher does not disclose a fixed sample size for this particular report. A further 43% say they have gone back and uninstalled an app after the fact for the same reason, once they realized how much access it had already collected.
That avoidance instinct extends past the install decision. 73% of surveyed users say it bothers them when an app asks for data-collection permissions, and 46% believe not every permission a typical app requests is actually necessary for it to function. Our companion analysis of mobile app over-permissioning found the same pattern from the developer side: 87% of Android apps and 60% of iOS apps request at least one permission they do not need for their core function, based on NordVPN's May 2026 audit of 103 top apps across 18 categories. Users are not imagining the problem; the apps really are asking for more than the job requires.
Figure 2: Nearly three in four users say excessive permission requests actively bother them. Source: GoodFirms, 2025 mobile app permissions survey.
Every one of these numbers points the same direction: a permission request that looks unjustified costs an install, and one that already happened costs a user later. A privacy policy generator that lists exactly which permissions your app requests, and why each one is required, gives users the context GoodFirms' data says they are actively looking for before they hit deny.
Does permission denial vary by app category?
It varies enough that the same permission request can be a formality in one category and a dealbreaker in another. Airship's 2025 report uses three categories to illustrate how its percentile benchmarks work, and the spread between them is wide: Medical, Health and Fitness apps saw a 57.1% median push opt-in rate, Nonprofit, Charities and Foundations apps saw 67.5%, and Media apps saw only 44.5%, all drawn from the report's Jan-Dec 2024 dataset.
Figure 3: Media apps see the highest denial rate of the three categories Airship uses to illustrate its benchmarks. Source: Airship, 2025 Mobile App Push Notification Benchmarks report.
Categories that deliver an obvious, immediate benefit from the permission, a nonprofit sending a donation receipt, a health app confirming a logged symptom, see users grant access more readily than categories where the payoff feels vaguer, like a media app pushing a headline the user did not ask for. The lesson generalizes past push notifications: the clearer the stated reason for a permission, the higher the grant rate tends to run.
How many users deny location and tracking permissions specifically?
Location and cross-app tracking are the two permission categories with the longest research history, and both show denial running well above the push notification baseline. 59% of American smartphone app users had turned off location tracking, either device-wide or within a specific app, according to Pew Research Center's 2015 survey of 461 app users, the last major academic study to ask the question directly with a disclosed sample and margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points. No comparably rigorous, sample-disclosed replacement has surfaced in the decade since, so treat this figure as the most cited historical benchmark rather than a current measurement.
Tracking-specific consent runs even higher. Pollfish surveyed 1,000 iOS and 1,000 US Android users in early 2021, shortly before Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework launched, and found 68.3% of iOS respondents and 67.5% of Android respondents said they would likely deny an opt-in tracking request if one appeared. That 2021 intent survey predates ATT's actual rollout, so it measures stated preference rather than observed behavior, and real-world App Tracking Transparency opt-in data is its own topic with its own dedicated research trail.
Figure 4: Every major platform change of the last 16 years has pushed toward more explicit, harder-to-miss consent screens. Sources: Pew Research Center (2015), Apple developer documentation, Android developer documentation, Airship (2025).
Location and tracking permissions consistently see higher denial than push notifications because the perceived risk is higher and the benefit to the user is less direct.
What happens after a user denies a permission?
A denial is rarely the end of the interaction. Most apps are built to keep functioning in some reduced form, and platform guidelines from both Apple and Google now discourage blocking a core feature outright just because one optional permission was declined.
Figure 5: The typical runtime permission flow on iOS and Android, from prompt to fallback state. Source: process derived from Apple's and Google's published permission design guidelines.
Apps that fall back gracefully after a denial tend to retain more of the users who said no the first time, since those users can still complete their core task and may grant the permission later once they understand why it matters.
Permission denial rates by type
| Permission type | What's measured | Denial rate | Source (year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push notifications (iOS) | Users who decline the notification prompt, median app | 50.6% | Airship (2024 data, published 2025) |
| Push notifications (Android) | Users who decline the notification prompt, median app | 40.5% | Airship (2024 data, published 2025) |
| Location tracking | Users who turned off location device-wide or in an app | 59% | Pew Research Center (2015) |
| App tracking (opt-in style) | Users who say they would deny a tracking opt-in prompt | 67.5% to 68.3% | Pollfish (2021) |
The Bottom Line
Whichever permission type gets measured, denial is common, not rare. Half of iPhone users decline the push notification prompt on the median app, four in ten Android users now do the same after Android 13 closed the old default-on gap, and formal survey data on location and tracking permissions runs even higher. Layered on top of that is a behavioral pattern GoodFirms' 2025 data makes explicit: 86% of users will skip an install entirely over a permission list that looks excessive, and 43% will uninstall later if they missed it the first time. None of this is users being difficult. It is users making a reasonable judgment call with incomplete information, and the apps and sites that explain the judgment call clearly, in a privacy policy and in the permission prompt's own rationale text, are the ones that keep the install.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of users deny app permission requests? The median iOS app saw only 49.4% of users opt in to push notification permission requests in 2024, meaning roughly 50.6% denied the prompt, according to Airship's 2025 Mobile App Push Notification Benchmarks report. Android users granted the same permission more often that year, with a 59.5% median opt-in rate.
How many people avoid downloading apps that ask for too many permissions? 86% of mobile users say they avoid downloading an app altogether when it requests what they consider too many permissions, according to GoodFirms' 2025 survey of app users, and 43% have uninstalled an app after the fact for the same reason.
What percentage of users deny location tracking permission? 59% of American smartphone app users had turned off location tracking, either device-wide or within a specific app, according to Pew Research Center's 2015 survey of 461 app users, the most recent formal academic study to ask the question directly.
Would users deny a permission even if the app needed it to work? 13% of surveyed users say they would deny a permission regardless of whether the app actually needs it to function, according to GoodFirms' 2025 survey, while the remaining 87% say they would grant access when it is genuinely required.
Where the Numbers Come From
- Airship. (2025). "2025 Mobile App Push Notification Benchmarks." Median iOS opt-in rate 49.4%, Android 59.5%, aggregated from January to December 2024 across more than 9 billion app users and thousands of apps in 13 industry verticals.
- GoodFirms. (2025). "Why Do Apps Keep Asking For Permissions and What You Really Need to Know About Data Control." 86% avoid downloading over-permissioned apps, 43% have uninstalled one, 13% would deny access regardless of need; publisher does not disclose a sample size for this survey.
- Pew Research Center. (2015). "An Analysis of Android App Permissions." Survey of 461 U.S. adults, January 27 to February 16, 2015, margin of error plus or minus 5.6 percentage points; 59% had turned off location tracking.
- Pollfish. (2021). "Nearly 70% of iOS and Android Users Will Deny Tracking Permissions if They Are Requested In-App to Opt-In." Two surveys of 1,000 US respondents each, iOS and Android, published February 2021.
- NordVPN. (2026). "Mobile privacy: What do your apps want to know?" Research Lab report, 103 apps audited across 18 categories, published May 2026, cited via PrivacyTerms.io's companion mobile app privacy analysis.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. The Pew Research Center and Pollfish figures are the most rigorous sample-disclosed studies available on their respective questions but predate 2022; treat them as historical benchmarks rather than current measurements until a fresher, comparably documented study replaces them. Push notification and permission-avoidance figures are refreshed at least twice a year as Airship and other publishers release new benchmark editions.
