If you use an iPhone in the European Union, the tracking box you tap away on every new app is being rewritten, and the Settings switch behind it gets a longer name. Apple told developers on September 16 that beginning with iOS 27.2 and iPadOS 27.2, apps in the EU can use an alternative version of the App Tracking Transparency prompt, and that in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania it will be the only version available. Both releases are still in beta, so wording and timing can change before they ship.
Apple credits the change to “agreements with select European competition authorities” and does not name them. What it does say plainly is that the underlying rules have not moved: “The requirements for when you must seek permission to track users will remain the same.” This is a change to the wording, the layout and how often you can be asked, not to what counts as tracking.
What the alternative prompt adds
Apple’s User Privacy and Data Use page is the only place that describes the new box in any detail:
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The alternative version of the App Tracking Transparency system prompt has modified formatting and language and provides you the option to use a text button labeled "Additional Information." This allows you to surface additional information about your request to link user or device data collected from your app with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, or to share user or device data with a data broker.
So the one element you can expect to actually see is an Additional Information text button, which a developer can use to explain in its own words what it wants to link and who it might hand data to. Apple has not published the new prompt text or a screenshot, and the developer post does not include one, so nobody outside the beta knows yet how the two boxes differ line by line.
Five countries get only the new version
Everywhere else in the EU, developers choose which prompt to show. In Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania they do not get a choice. Apple’s reason is a single clause, “Due to legal requirements,” with no statute named. The iOS and iPadOS 27.2 beta release notes repeat the same list under New Features:
AppTrackingTransparency (AppTrackingTransparency) now supports an alternative expanded prompt and re-prompting on a yearly basis for EU users. The alternative prompt is required for users in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Romania. (179504171)
If you live in one of those five, every app that asks to track you on iOS 27.2 asks with the expanded box. If you are elsewhere in the EU, you may see either one, depending on the app.
The yearly re-prompt, and the switch that stops it
The second half of the change is how often an app may ask again. Apple’s rule for the EU, quoted from the same page:
In addition, for users in the European Union, you can reprompt a user via the App Tracking Transparency system prompt one year after the user’s previous choice in your app’s App Tracking Transparency system prompt, regardless of whether that choice was to accept or reject. A user cannot be re-prompted if they have disabled "Allow Apps to Request to Track" (renamed to "Allow Apps to Request to Link Your Activity Across Companies" in the EU) in their device’s Settings.
Two things follow from that sentence. A no is good for a year rather than forever, so an app you refused can come back and ask once more twelve months later. And the global off switch is the way to end the question entirely. Apple’s support page puts that switch at Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, where it currently reads Allow Apps to Request to Track. In the EU it becomes Allow Apps to Request to Link Your Activity Across Companies. Turn it off and no app can show either prompt, and the yearly re-ask never happens.
The rename is the part most owners will notice first, because it describes the actual mechanic rather than the word “track.” Apple states the yearly re-prompt rule for EU users on this page and says nothing there about other regions.
When this reaches you
Not yet. All of it starts with iOS 27.2 and iPadOS 27.2, which are in beta. Apple posted the first builds on September 16, 24B5084k for iPhone and iPad, and has published no release date. The shipping software from September 14 is iOS 27.0, build 24A437, and it behaves the way it always has.
Three things worth keeping straight while the beta runs. Apple has not said the tracking rules are getting looser or stricter, and its own sentence says they are unchanged. Apple does not name the competition authorities or the legal requirements involved, so any specific regulation attached to this is somebody’s inference, not Apple’s statement. And the alternative prompt is an option for developers across most of the EU, which means the box you see will depend on the app you open.
More on the software this lands in: iOS 27 arrived on September 14, and the rest of the September 14 releases.
