Android 13‘s Picture Picker was a breath of contemporary air for privacy-conscious customers. Not like the all-or-nothing entry of app-specific pickers, it granted granular management over what photographs and movies you share. However its usefulness was restricted – your native library was all it knew. Nonetheless, excellent news is on the horizon, with cloud media suppliers like Google Photographs lastly getting ready to affix the get together.
As noticed by Android Authority, latest Google Photographs updates reveal full help for the Picture Picker for cloud help. Activating this function through a hidden flag opens a brand new “Cloud media app” web page in settings, the place you’ll be able to allow Google Photographs. This, in flip, unlocks a “Google Photographs entry” choice inside the Photographs app, letting you grant the Picture Picker permission to your cloud library.
Google Photographs arrange because the cloud media supplier for Android’s Picture Picker | Supply – Android Authority
This performance was introduced throughout Google I/O 2022 and has since then been just lately added to apps like Google Preserve, Google Chat, and Google Messages on units operating Android 11 with the November 2023 Google Play system replace. Nonetheless, adoption outdoors of Google’s personal apps requires app builders to implement the API, and adoption has been sluggish.
Now, with the addition of Google Photographs, and hopefully the broader rollout of this function, builders may now be inspired to undertake the Picture Picker, giving customers unparalleled management over their shared recollections. Hopefully, with Google Photographs paving the way in which, different cloud suppliers like Microsoft OneDrive will comply with swimsuit, creating a really common and privacy-respecting sharing expertise on Android.
As nice as this all sounds, there are nonetheless some points that should be labored out with the Picture Picker. For instance, as famous by Android professional, Mishaal Rahman, app-created albums like Snapseed’s stay hidden within the “Photographs” tab, absent from “Albums.” Moreover, he is discovered that cloud media would not seem within the new Android 14 permission dialog for partial entry.
But, these are minor hiccups in a significant step ahead. The hope is that different cloud suppliers will see the advantage of utilizing the Picture Picker and start to have their app builders implement the adjustments crucial to show this function on for them. Google has already taken step one to make this occur.
