In the installation process of any Android application, a screen with the permissions required by the application is always shown. While some permissions are relatively harmless, others must be pondered carefully, as they can cause the alteration of important system configurations or, in some way, have a negative impact on the user. The careful reviewing of this information is therefore, in our vision, an important step; however, most users ignore it.
This application is, as its name says, an explorer for permissions. It shows users a complete list of the permissions existent in their Android systems. For the most common permissions some functional demos have been implemented, demonstrating what can an application with that permission can do (never causing damage to the user without their consent, but aiming to have enough impact for the user to understand the complete possibilities of the permission). Accompanying the "demonstrations of power", the user can see which applications currently installed in the system have a given permission, so the user can develop a critical mind about the need each application has of the permissions it requested at installation time.
In order for the user to find the permissions they are looking for, the application have filtering mechanisms by protection level, group and relevance. The several criteria are thoroughly described in the application itself. In addition, the user can filter permissions by their name.
Obviously, in order for the application to be able to do all demonstrations, it requests at installation time all permissions for which it has functional examples. The source code of the application is available publicly, so users can verify its harmlessness.
Copyright (c) 2012 Rui Gonçalves and Daniel Cibrão. See LICENSE for details.