But I wouldn’t want the settings app for example to pop up a bunch of dialogs asking for permission to enable various private APIs.

Exactly. Come in HN. You’re smart. If you give the average user numerous pop up boxes to click they’re going to be conditioned to click allow no matter what the permission is to get where they need to go. It is not an answer and counter productive.

Sure, there's a fine line between users actually reading the prompt and making a real choice vs. just tapping "allow" to get it to go away.

I feel like "do you want to give this app your phone number?" falls under the former, though. Right there along with "do you want to give this app your location?", which is of course already something users have to allow.