Google Photos cloud content will soon appear in Android’s Photo Picker, finally

One of many key options of final 12 months’s Android 13 launch was the brand new system Picture Picker. The Picture Picker permits you to select precisely which media information to share with an app. In distinction, the customized media pickers that many apps use both get entry to all or none of your photographs and movies. It might be nice if extra builders adopted Android’s Picture Picker because it’s extra personal by design, however there’s a superb motive that many haven’t: It’s nonetheless lacking primary options like letting you choose media information saved within the cloud. That would change quickly, although, since we’re lastly seeing indicators that cloud content material from apps like Google Pictures will seem in Android’s Picture Picker.

If you happen to’re not that aware of Android’s Picture Picker, I don’t blame you, since there aren’t quite a lot of apps on the market that put it to use proper now. The Picture Picker is accessible natively on all units working Android 11 and newer because it’s a part of an updatable Venture Mainline module, however it’s additionally accessible on units working Android variations way back to Android 4.4 due to a backported model supplied by Google Play Companies. Right here’s what the Picture Picker presently seems to be like in the event you had been to search out an app that invokes it:

What Android’s Picture Picker seems to be like with out cloud media help

As you may see, the Picture Picker has two tabs: “Pictures” and “Albums”. The “Pictures” tab reveals you all of your photographs, movies, or each in reverse chronological order. The “Albums” tab reveals you media objects from the Digicam, Movies, Screenshots, Downloads, and Favorites albums in your system. If you happen to retailer all of your media information domestically in your system, then the Picture Picker will present each media file you would presumably wish to share. Nonetheless, in the event you retailer most of your photographs and movies on Google Pictures, then Android’s Picture Picker shall be lacking quite a lot of objects.

Google knew this could be an issue for a lot of customers, which is why they designed Android’s Picture Picker to help deciding on objects from cloud media suppliers from the get-go. Cloud media suppliers don’t robotically seem in Android’s Picture Picker, although; they should implement an API that offers apps read-only entry to media information saved within the cloud. That is just like how the older system file picker works with cloud media suppliers, however since that have has existed for years now, many apps have had time to combine with it.

Android’s system file picker, which the Picture Picker supplants for choosing media information, has a extra dated UI however affords broader entry to information from native and cloud storage suppliers. It may be invoked straight or not directly (leftmost picture, tapping the “browse” button).

The identical can’t be stated for the brand new Picture Picker, which nonetheless hasn’t had a single cloud media supplier built-in with it. That is although again at I/O 2022, a 12 months and a half in the past, Google stated that cloud media suppliers like Google Pictures shall be supported in an upcoming replace. That is lastly coming to fruition quickly, although, since latest variations of the Google Pictures app have added full help for Android’s Picture Picker.

After activating this function, a brand new “Cloud media app” web page seems below Settings > Apps. Right here, we had been in a position to activate Google Pictures as a cloud media supplier for Android’s Picture Picker. Enabling this function additionally opened up a brand new “Google Pictures entry” choice within the settings web page for the Google Pictures app. This selection results in an in-app “Picture picker” web page that allows you to determine whether or not to grant the Picture Picker entry to the photographs and movies you’ve saved on Google Pictures.

The assorted methods you may set Google Pictures because the cloud media supplier for Android’s Picture Picker.

With Google Pictures now set because the cloud media supplier, the Picture Picker is ready to pull within the photographs and movies I backed as much as the cloud. This significantly expands the variety of media information I can share with an app, as proven under.

A have a look at Android’s Picture Picker with cloud media help.

Even with this growth, nonetheless, the Picture Picker nonetheless has some limitations. First, the “Albums” tab nonetheless doesn’t present native albums created by apps like Snapseed, so that you’ll want to search out media information saved in these albums by scrolling by means of the “Pictures” tab. Second, cloud media objects aren’t proven when the Picture Picker is invoked by means of the permissions dialog, which is a part of a brand new function launched in Android 14 that lets customers grant apps partial entry to photographs and movies. Meaning cloud media objects are solely when the Picture Picker is invoked by an app. Happily, this is applicable even when an app indirectly invokes the Picture Picker, as is the case in apps like Google Chat and Google Maintain following a latest Google Play System Replace.

Hopefully, Google rolls out this function quickly to customers because the lack of cloud media help within the Picture Picker is partly why many builders aren’t using it of their apps but. After Google Pictures integrates with the Picture Picker, hopefully, different cloud media suppliers like Microsoft OneDrive comply with swimsuit.