Having rejected Apple’s initial compromise proposals for App Tracking Transparency in the App Store, Germany says it has made a final agreement that will make the system fair to all developers.
Germany’s federal cartel office, the Bundeskartellamt, has been challenging Apple over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. This is the feature that requires users to confirm they allow data tracking by developers, and which is seen as favoring Apple’s own apps.
Apple has previously offered a compromise that chiefly consisted of rewording the warning dialogs displayed when a third-party app is first launched. That compromise was rejected but now the regulator says that it has agreed binding commitments with Apple and has concluded its case.
“Apple is allowed to provide for a level of protection for its users that exceeds the minimum legal requirements,” said Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt in a statement. “However, if Apple sets up additional rules within its ecosystem for the use of data, these rules must, under Germany’s special abuse provision for large digital companies, not treat its own offerings better than those of its competitors.”
“This is precisely where our competition concerns arose,” continued Mundt. “Apple will now align the consent requests much more closely and give third-party app providers more freedom to combine the necessary requests in a sensible way.”
In a statement to AppleInsider, an Apple spokesperson said that the regulator actually agrees that ATT is already clear. It has asked for these further changes as refinements.
“At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right, and we introduced App Tracking Transparency to give users a simple way to control whether apps have permission to track their activity across other companies’ apps and websites,” said the spokesperson. “While we believe the current ATT prompt provides a clear, easy-to-understand and effective way to keep users in control of their data — an opinion shared by the German data protection authorities — we have agreed to make changes to the text and formatting of the prompt at the FCO’s request.”
“These commitments ensure we can continue to provide this important privacy tool in Europe,” continued the statement, “and keep users, not ad tech companies and data brokers, in control of their data.”
What happens next
Apple now has four months to implement the agreed changes to how ATT works, during which time it is to test the new wording with developers. Those changes are binding commitments that the regulator says run for the next seven years, and will be monitored by an independent trustee.
The agreed changes chiefly mean Apple doing more to reword the warning dialogs shown to users. These have previously been described as scare screens, and the Bundeskartellamt’s announcement gave broad descriptions of how they must now be “neutral in content, wording and layout.”
Apple has told AppleInsider that the specifics of the new agreement include:
- Replacing the current ATT banner prompt with a full-screen version
- Changing button text
- Allowing developers to make text formatting changes
- Allowing developers an additional screen of information
- Minor wording revisions
- Allowing developers to prompt users again after one year
Apple is also required to reduce “the complexity of the current consent request architecture” for developers. That’s part of the requirement to let developers try to persuade users to allow tracking.
Publishers and developers will be able to combine Apple’s consent dialogs with those required under Germany’s data protection law. It hasn’t been specified whether this means letting developers edit Apple’s warnings, but they must be made “clear to users.”
According to the regulator, what all of this means is that “Apple will align the consent prompts for its own offerings and for third-party apps much more closely. “
Apple does definitely use ATT to discourage users from granting permission for third-party apps to track them. It also does not do that with its own apps, but the company has previously argued that this is because none of its apps even attempt to track users.
What ATT does
App Tracking Transparency was introduced in early 2021 as a way for users to limit how much apps tracked them. By October 2021, social media sites such as Facebook had reportedly lost $10 billion in advertising revenue because of it.
It has subsequently been under fire from more than Germany, although in January 2026 a French court mostly sided with Apple. It chose not to order any changes, but it did still fine Apple over ATT — as did Italy in 2025.
Those rulings may effectively been superseded by the new agreement with Germany, however. According to Reuters, Apple has said that these changes would apply in almost all European Union countries, though it has not specified which.
UPDATED: 12:00 ET with Apple’s statement
