❯ Doubao phone assistant ends its notice period as 153 apps opt out of screen automation

Open by default, with an opt-out listAccording to the 21st Century Business Herald, the 30-day notice period for ByteDance’s Doubao phone assistant’s Screen Automation Execution Protocol ended on October 14. Third-party apps that have not filed an opt-out will now be opened to screen automation gradually by risk tier, and the opt-out list published the same day contains 153 apps. Developers can opt out at any time, and the platform promises a response within three working days.

Who is on the listBy the paper’s count, the list includes 65 apps from Tencent and its ecosystem and 23 from Alibaba and its ecosystem, both marked “including but not limited to” and together about 57.5% of the total, plus 14 from Kuaishou and 11 from Meituan. Another 33 are listed individually, including Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Didi and several bank and carrier apps. Among AI rivals, DeepSeek and Kimi are listed individually, while Qwen, Yuanbao and Kling appear under their parent groups. No ByteDance or JD apps are named.

An assistant that taps the screen for youThe Doubao phone assistant comes preinstalled on ZTE Nubia’s M153 and NaviX Ultra phones. It reads what is on screen and simulates taps and swipes to compare prices, book restaurants or file leave requests inside other apps. After the technical preview launched last December, some apps showed login anomalies, and Doubao then disabled operations on WeChat and other apps. During the notice period, it could operate only system apps, ByteDance apps and apps that had explicitly agreed.

Super-apps don't want to be bypassedSuper-apps such as WeChat and Taobao earn much of their revenue from users browsing feeds and ads inside the app; if an assistant clicks through the steps on the user’s behalf, that exposure is skipped. The opt-out list shows that for phone agents to really work across apps, they will have to negotiate with each platform, not just prove they can tap the buttons.

▮ SIGNALThe hardest problem for phone agents is not model capability but who owns the entry point: whoever taps the screen for the user is diverting attention that used to belong to the apps.