Tweeters can similarly check which apps are connected to their Twitter account: open your Twitter timeline in a desktop browser, then click your user icon in the top right, select Settings and privacy, then click Apps in the left-hand column. Click the “X” next to an app’s icon to remove it from your Facebook profile. You’ll now see all your connected apps click on one to see what personal information they can access, and to choose whether or not each one can send you notifications. Then, in the page that opens, click Apps in the left-hand pane.
To review which apps you have installed, open Facebook in a desktop browser, click the dropdown arrow at the top right of the window and select Settings.
Check your connected apps on Facebookįacebook apps are another privacy concern – plus they can pester you with annoying notifications. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images 5. Take charge of Facebook permissions to protect your privacy.
You can review these by tapping the Share button inside Safari, then scrolling right and tapping on More you’ll see a list of all installed activities, with switches to disable or enable them individually.
In the new Microsoft Edge browser, click the menu icon in the top right of the window and select Extensions.Ĭhrome for Android doesn’t support extensions, but apps can add “activities” to Safari for iOS.
In Safari, the list is under Safari > Preferences > Extensions. In Chrome, you can check your installed extensions by typing chrome://extensions into the address bar. It’s a good idea to disable or uninstall any you’re not using regularly. Clear out browser extensionsīrowser extensions may slow down your online experience, and they can even compromise your security, since they can spy on every site you visit. Tap on any one to see which apps have access to those permissions you can revoke permissions by tapping the switch next to an app’s name. Here you’ll see a breakdown of permission types – such as Calendar, Camera, Contacts and so forth. To audit the permissions used by a specific app, open Settings, scroll down and tap on its name.Īndroid users meanwhile can go to Settings > Apps, then tap the cogwheel icon to access App Permissions. On iOS you can easily check which apps have access to what under Settings > Privacy.
Audit permissions on your mobile appsĮven if there’s plenty of space free on your smartphone, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on which apps can access your personal information, or do costly things such as make phone calls or send text messages. Deleting two or three big unneeded files can often free up more space than clearing out thousands of cache files and cookies. There’s also a list view, which you can sort by size, to instantly reveal the largest folders. These tools scan your hard disk and generate a visual map showing the relative sizes of all folders and files. Windows users can use a free utility called WinDirStat the Mac equivalent, also free, is called Disk Inventory X. And since these files are unique to you, generic cleanup tools are likely to miss them. Old, innocuous-looking files can gobble up huge amounts of space on your laptop, such as backups that are no longer needed, or big downloads that you’d forgotten about. Consider streaming music and podcasts rather than downloading them for offline playback – and see 11, below, for our advice on photo storage. You can, however, free up space manually by clearing your Safari cache, via Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. You’ll see options for saving space and clearing out clutter.įor Android smartphones, there’s a good range of third-party cleanup apps iOS isn’t so well served here, since apps can’t remove files created by other applications.
Mac OS Sierra has a similar feature, but it’s well hidden: to find it, open the System Information tool, then open the Window menu and select “storage management”. If your laptop is running low on storage, Windows’s built-in Disk Cleanup tool can find and wipe unneeded files – just search for it in the Start menu.