[princekolt]

Plus: At least Instagram and Messenger will force you to enable the microphone to let you use the camera even if just to take pictures. Now I always take pictures from the Camera app and simply load it into the app instead of giving them permission to use the microphone.

[monkeynotes]

Can apps with access to the camera simply record video and audio whenever they want, even while running in the background?

[princekolt]

Yes. AVFoundation provides both a turn-key camera UI view and direct control to the camera and microphone.

Correction: Not in the background, but it could do it silently while the app is in the foreground.

[monkeynotes]

Looks like Android P blocks background access to camera and mic too: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17091104/android-p-prevent...

I can only assume that up until P developers could record both sound and video in the background. That's some scary shit.

[edit] Why isn't there a system level visual indication or audit trail of any camera or mic access? Surely this would be trivial to implement, you could even disable it if you just didn't give a toot about privacy at all.

[princekolt]

Indeed. Finally in Mojave Apple is adding direct control over which apps have access to the camera and microphone, but in general iOS is miles ahead of macOS in regards of privacy control.