Apple to soften EU tracking-consent screens after antitrust probe

Apple has agreed to modify the requirements for apps on its platforms that ask users for consent to be tracked across other apps and websites, as a result of a multi-year antitrust probe led by Germany’s federal competition regulator and joined by others. Regulators said the system — known as App Tracking Transparency, or ATT — had favored Apple over third-party apps, since Apple allows its own apps to use consumers’ ecosystem data without requiring a consent screen.

The new agreements with select European competition authorities don’t eliminate the need to prompt users, or change when that prompt appears. Instead, they let app developers whose software is distributed in the EU show an alternative consent screen with modified formatting and language, plus the option to link out to “additional information” about why the app is requesting the permission, among other changes. Apple’s compliance involves more than half a dozen changes meant to make ATT consent screens less alarming to users — displaying them as full-page screens rather than pop-ups, removing the word “track,” changing the choice buttons from “Allow” and “Ask App Not to Track” to “Allow” and “Reject,” and adjusting colors and formatting. Developers will also be able to offer users more detailed information through a clickable link.

Apple said that, because of legal requirements, only apps distributed in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania will get the alternative version of the prompt.

Users typically respond to consent screens by asking apps not to track them, which hurts ad-supported businesses like Meta while boosting Apple’s own — apps request the permission because it lets them show personalized ads, which generate more revenue for the developer. Apple has argued that these consent screens protect consumer privacy, even though it permits its own apps to show personalized ads based on the data they collect from within its ecosystem. The company also said it will now let app developers distributing in the EU re-prompt their EU users one year after that user’s previous choice on the ATT consent screen.

Why it matters

The concession shows how European antitrust pressure can force Apple to loosen a system it controls entirely on its own platforms, even as the underlying tension — between Apple’s privacy framing and its own ad-data advantage — remains unresolved.