Loupe is a demo app from Mysk that surfaces the kinds of information an iOS app can read without special permissions. It highlights fingerprinting inputs like volume creation time, pasteboard change count, locale and network details, and limited probing for whether specific apps are installed. The point is not that Loupe itself is dangerous. It is that ordinary native apps can quietly assemble enough entropy to track or correlate users even when they deny obvious permissions.
The strongest reaction was not surprise that tracking exists. It was surprise at how much Apple still leaves exposed while marketing iPhone privacy so aggressively. People zeroed in on two leaks as especially hard to justify: the boot volume creation timestamp, which can reveal when a phone was first set up or erased, and app install probing through URL schemes. Several comments sharpened the picture by noting that iOS does not let an app enumerate every installed app outright, but it does let apps test for up to 50 declared schemes, which is still plenty when combined with other signals. That turned the conversation from "Apple already fixed this" to "Apple narrowed one abuse path but left enough entropy for determined trackers."
A second theme was that the missing control is network access. Many saw Loupe as proof that privacy permissions are incomplete if any app can freely phone home with the data it can gather. The practical ask was simple: give users a per-app internet toggle, or at least make network use visible and revocable. That idea got extra force from examples people already use elsewhere. Android variants like
GrapheneOS and some
AOSP-based systems expose an internet permission. iPhones sold in China reportedly expose per-app controls for Wi-Fi and cellular access because regulation requires it. That made Apple's omission look less like a technical limitation and more like a product choice.
The comments also added an important limit to the story. Blocking network access is not a silver bullet. On Android, apps can sometimes route work through other components like
Play Services or use inter-process communication, so isolation is only as strong as the surrounding model. On iOS, install probing is constrained, clipboard contents do require prompts, and some of the scary examples are indirect signals rather than explicit identifiers. Even so, the broad takeaway held. Browser tracking is visible enough that users install blockers and regulators pay attention. App tracking is quieter, richer, and often embedded in SDKs or hidden behind vague disclosures. For many readers, Loupe landed less as a one-off privacy demo and more as a clean illustration of why companies push users into apps and why Apple's current privacy story still leaves large holes at the native app layer.