Android app auto update after permissions added then removed

Question

I have updated an app on Google Play and the update requested new app permissions. This meant that auto update did not kick in and users had to manually update. Many of my users chose not to update, so I'm now considering removing the functionality requiring these permissions.

I want to know if I was to revert the permissions back to the previous version will people who skipped the latest version then auto update to the new version (because permissions won't have changed for them).

In theory I know they should auto update, but does anyone have experience of doing this?

Answer 1

Yes, your app will auto-update once again, when the latest build does not have the added permissions anymore. I tried :-)

The first spike is an update without permission changes. In the nest 2 updates I had extra permissions, as you can see by the lack of updates. The latest update removed those permissions.