Roughly 62% of iPhone users deny Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, based on Adjust's 2026 Mobile App Trends Report, which put the global opt-in rate at 38% in the first quarter of 2026. AppsFlyer's competing 2026 State of Mobile report shows an even higher denial rate of 71%, built from a 29% opt-in figure. Both trackers agree on the direction: users have grown steadily more willing to allow tracking since Apple introduced the prompt in April 2021, when opt-in sat at just 11% to 15%.
What percentage of users deny the App Tracking Transparency prompt?
Between 62% and 71% of users deny Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, depending on which mobile measurement platform is doing the counting. Adjust's 2026 Mobile App Trends Report, published in February 2026, puts the global opt-in rate at 38% for Q1 2026, implying a 62% denial rate. AppsFlyer's 2026 State of Mobile report puts opt-in lower, at 29%, for a 71% denial rate.
Figure 1: The three most-cited ATT trackers do not agree on a single global rate. Source: Adjust 2026 Mobile App Trends Report, AppsFlyer 2026 State of Mobile, Singular Quarterly Trends Report Q2 2024.
Singular's Quarterly Trends Report measures something stricter still, an "immediate yes rate" of just 13.85% globally as of Q2 2024, counting only users who tap Allow the first time the prompt appears rather than opt-in among everyone who has ever seen it. None of these figures is wrong. Apple does not publish its own opt-in numbers, so every tracker is modeling a share of a population it can only partially observe, using its own install base as the sample. Treat Adjust's 38% opt-in, 62% deny split as the current best-documented estimate and AppsFlyer's 71% denial figure as the more conservative, higher-friction read.
Denial rates this high are not a fringe result. A majority of users saying no to cross-app tracking has been the norm since the prompt first shipped.
How has the ATT opt-in rate changed since Apple launched it in 2021?
Global ATT opt-in has risen from 11% to 15% in April 2021 to 38% in Q1 2026, according to Adjust's historical benchmark data, meaning the denial rate has fallen from roughly 85% to 89% at launch to about 62% today. That is real movement, but it is a five-year climb of roughly 25 percentage points, not a majority flip.
Figure 2: Opt-in has climbed steadily but has never come close to a majority. Source: Adjust 2026 Mobile App Trends Report and Adjust historical ATT benchmark data.
Figure 3: Five years of prompt fatigue and slow gains, not a turning point. Source: Adjust 2026 Mobile App Trends Report, Singular Quarterly Trends Report Q2 2024.
Early social media apps saw even steeper resistance. A widely cited Q3 2021 estimate put opt-out at roughly 80% across major social platforms specifically, a narrower and higher-friction slice of the market than the all-app averages Adjust and AppsFlyer report today, and one that should not be read as a single universal 2021 figure. The overall trend across every source is the same: users have warmed to the prompt gradually, not suddenly, and the plateau since 2024 suggests the easy gains are behind us.
Which app categories see the highest tracking denial rates?
Publications apps have the highest denial rate of any category Adjust tracks, at 74%, or 26% opt-in, even after that figure improved from an 82% denial rate a year earlier. Gaming apps sit at the opposite end, with a 61% denial rate overall and sports games denying tracking only 46% of the time, according to Adjust's Gaming App Insights Report 2026.
Figure 4: Sports and action games consent to tracking far more often than the average app. Source: Adjust Gaming App Insights Report 2026, Adjust 2026 Mobile App Trends Report.
Arcade games were the sole category to move backward, with opt-in falling from 50% to 46% year over year even as every other tracked genre improved. Adjust's gaming report, drawn from the top 5,000 apps and its full anonymized dataset across January 2024 to January 2026, attributes the gaming advantage to how directly a tracking-enabled feature (multiplayer leaderboards, cross-device save sync) maps to something the player wants, a value exchange e-commerce and publications apps struggle to make as concrete. That gap matters for compliance, not just marketing spend: an app that collects data regardless of a user's ATT choice still has to disclose that collection somewhere. A privacy policy generator built for mobile apps keeps that disclosure current whether a given user's tracking status is authorized, denied, or restricted.
The category with the most data to gain from a better opt-in pitch is publications, where three out of four users currently say no.
Does the app tracking denial rate vary by country?
Yes, by a wide margin. Indonesia has the lowest denial rate of any country in Adjust's Q1 2026 dataset, at 40%, or 60% opt-in, while India's denial rate fell from 56% to 49% over the same year as its opt-in rate rose from 44% to 51%. Adjust's Gaming App Insights Report 2026 covers 21 countries across 6 regions, and the country-level spread is wider than the category-level spread.
Southeast Asian and South Asian markets are outperforming the global average by double digits, a pattern Adjust's report ties to younger smartphone-first user bases with less accumulated skepticism toward app permissions than markets where ATT has been a recurring privacy-news story since 2021. This is also where our broader look at mobile app permission and tracking data is useful context: regional opt-in gaps track closely with regional differences in how many permissions an app requests in the first place, not just how the ATT prompt is worded.
Any app publisher assuming a single global denial rate applies to their audience is working from the wrong number if their user base skews toward these higher-opt-in markets.
How does Apple's ATT prompt actually work?
Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework requires any app that wants to track a user across other companies' apps or websites to show a system-level prompt before it can access the device's advertising identifier, and the user's choice is binding until they change it in Settings. There is no default state that counts as consent; the app must ask.
Figure 5: Four possible prompt outcomes, one disclosure requirement that applies regardless of which one a user picks. Source: Apple Developer documentation on App Tracking Transparency, as summarized in Adjust's 2026 Mobile App Trends Report methodology notes.
Figure 6: The two outcomes Adjust's opt-in metric measures directly; Restricted and Not Determined states are excluded from this ratio. Source: Adjust 2026 Mobile App Trends Report.
Because "Denied" and "Restricted" both block the advertising identifier, most attribution platforms report a single combined opt-in rate rather than breaking Restricted out separately, which is one more reason different trackers publish different headline numbers for what looks like the same statistic.
Where do global ATT trackers agree and disagree?
| Tracker / report | Global opt-in rate | Global denial rate | Data period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adjust, 2026 Mobile App Trends Report | 38% | 62% | Q1 2026 |
| Adjust, Gaming App Insights Report 2026 (gaming only) | 39% | 61% | Q1 2026 |
| AppsFlyer, 2026 State of Mobile | 29% | 71% | 2026 |
| Singular, Quarterly Trends Report (immediate yes) | 13.85% | 86.15% | Q2 2024 |
Source: Adjust, AppsFlyer, and Singular, as cited throughout this article.
| Segment | Opt-in rate | Denial rate | Source period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sports games (highest category) | 54% | 46% | Adjust, Q1 2026 |
| Indonesia (lowest-denial country) | 60% | 40% | Adjust, Q1 2026 |
| India | 51% | 49% | Adjust, Q1 2026 |
| Publications (highest-denial category) | 26% | 74% | Adjust, Q1 2026 |
Source: Adjust Gaming App Insights Report 2026 and Adjust 2026 Mobile App Trends Report.
The Bottom Line
No matter which measurement platform you trust, a majority of users deny Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt: 62% by Adjust's count, 71% by AppsFlyer's, and as high as 86% by Singular's stricter immediate-response metric. The five-year trend since ATT launched in 2021 is real but slow, gaining roughly 25 percentage points of opt-in overall, concentrated almost entirely in gaming and, more recently, publications apps. The practical implication does not depend on picking a winner among the trackers: any app that collects user data has to disclose what it collects and why, regardless of whether a given visitor lands in the Authorized, Denied, or Restricted bucket, and regulators and app store reviewers check that disclosure against actual behavior, not against ATT status.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of users deny app tracking on iPhone? Roughly 62% of users deny Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt, based on Adjust's 2026 Mobile App Trends Report, which puts the global opt-in rate at 38% in Q1 2026. AppsFlyer's 2026 State of Mobile report shows an even higher denial rate of 71%, built from a 29% opt-in figure.
What was the ATT opt-in rate when Apple first launched it? Between 11% and 15% in April 2021, according to Adjust's historical benchmark data, meaning roughly 85% to 89% of users denied tracking in ATT's first weeks. The opt-in rate has since climbed to 38% by Q1 2026.
Which app category has the highest tracking opt-in rate? Sports games lead at 54% opt-in, or a 46% denial rate, according to Adjust's Gaming App Insights Report 2026. Action games follow at 50% opt-in, while publications apps sit far lower at 26%.
Does the app tracking denial rate vary by country? Yes. Indonesia has the lowest denial rate of any country Adjust tracks, at 40%, or 60% opt-in. India's denial rate fell from 56% to 49% year over year as its opt-in rate climbed from 44% to 51%, per Adjust's Q1 2026 data covering 21 countries.
Where the Numbers Come From
- Adjust. (2026). "The 2026 Gaming App Insights Report." Global gaming ATT opt-in rose from 38% (Q1 2025) to 39% (Q1 2026); sports games 54%, action games 50%, arcade games fell from 50% to 46%; India rose from 44% to 51%, Indonesia at 60%. Sample: top 5,000 apps plus Adjust's full anonymized dataset, January 2024 to January 2026, across 23 game genres, 6 regions, and 21 countries. Published 15 April 2026.
- Adjust. (2026). "2026 Mobile App Trends Report." Global industry-average ATT opt-in rose from 35% (Q1 2025) to 38% (Q1 2026); gaming 39%, publications rose from 18% to 26%, e-commerce fell from 35% to 34%; initial 2021 opt-in cited at 11% to 15%. Published 18 February 2026.
- AppsFlyer. "2026 State of Mobile." Global ATT opt-in rate of 29%, described as stabilized since 2023; US opt-in rate of 32%, the highest among major markets measured.
- Singular. (2024). "Quarterly Trends Report, Q2 2024." Global immediate-opt-in ("yes") rate of 13.85%; gaming apps 18.58%, non-gaming apps 11.92%. A stricter first-prompt-only metric, not directly comparable to Adjust's or AppsFlyer's cumulative opt-in figures.
- Business of Apps. (2026). "App Tracking Transparency Opt-In Rates." Aggregated industry benchmark tracker spanning multiple measurement platforms, 2021 to 2026.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. ATT opt-in and denial rates vary meaningfully by measurement platform, methodology, and time window; treat the 29% to 38% global opt-in range (62% to 71% denial) as the current best-documented span rather than one fixed figure. This post's headline statistics are refreshed at least twice a year to track new Adjust, AppsFlyer, and Singular report editions.
