How to revoke third-party app access from your Google Account

June 9, 2023

`How to revoke third-party app access from your Google Account`

Home & Office

Why you can trust ZDNET : ZDNET independently tests and researches products to bring you our best recommendations and advice. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Our process

‘ZDNET Recommends’: What exactly does it mean?

ZDNET’s recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.

When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET’s editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.

Home Home & Office Work Life Productivity

How to revoke third-party app access from your Google Account

If you’ve given third-party apps access to your Google Account, you might want to go through the list and revoke permission for those apps you no longer use.

Written by Jack Wallen, Contributing Writer on

person using laptop — Getty Images/Cavan Images

I recently demonstrated how to manage apps connected to Google Drive (and why you should). I showed how it’s important to regularly comb through the apps with access, to weed out those apps that are no longer in use, no longer available, or no longer trusted.

While that recent how-to guide applied to Google Drive, you might not be aware that every time you use your Google account to log in to a service, that service (or app) has access to your account. And you could wind up with apps you no longer use having permission to access various aspects of your account.

Also: You can log into Google Workspace more securely with this major update

It’s hard to know if those old apps are either no longer available or are still under the control of a trustworthy organization. But you don’t want to leave anything to chance, so the best advice is to revoke access to those apps you either no longer use or no longer trust.

Fortunately, Google makes it fairly simple to manage access to your account. Let me show you how it’s done.

Revoking access to your account

What you’ll need: The only things you’ll need for this are a valid Google account and some apps that have been given access to your account. That’s it. Let’s cull the herd.

1. Log in to your Google account

Given you’re reading this in a web browser, you’ve already taken care of the first step.

Also: How to record a phone call on your Android phone

From that browser, log in to your Google account and point that browser to myaccount.google.com.

2. Open the Security section

From the My Account page, click Security in the left sidebar.

The Google My Account sidebar. — You’ll find what you’re looking for in the Security section.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

3. Manage third-party access

From the Security page, scroll down until you see Third-party apps with account access. From that section, click Manage third-party access.

The Third-party access section in Google My Account Security. — This is where you’ll find the listing of third-party apps that have access to your account.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

4. Locate the app in question

You should now see a complete listing of all the apps that have access to your Google account. Scroll through that list until you find the app you want to remove.

A partial listing of apps that have access to my Google account. — I have plenty of apps that need their access revoked.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

5. Revoke access

Once you’ve located the app in question, click its entry and then click Remove Access in the top right corner of the entry.

Also: 3 ways to spot a malware-infected app on your smartphone

You will then be prompted to verify the removal by clicking OK in the resulting popup.

The Calendly listing within Third-party access of My Account. — Revoking access to the Calendly service.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

It’ll take a second or two for Google to revoke access to the app or service. Once the popup goes away, you’ve successfully ousted the app from your account.

Also: How to configure your Pixel phone to automatically decline robocalls

And that’s all there is to it. Make sure to go through the entire list (it could be lengthy) and remove every app you no longer use from having access to your account. This is certainly one of those cases where you’re better off safe than sorry.