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

One of the important thing options of final yr’s Android 13 launch was the brand new system Photo Picker. The Photo Picker permits you to select precisely which media recordsdata 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 could be nice if extra builders adopted Android’s Photo Picker because it’s extra non-public by design, however there’s a very good cause that many haven’t: It’s nonetheless lacking primary options like letting you choose media recordsdata saved in the cloud. That might change soon, although, since we’re finally seeing indicators that cloud content from apps like Google Photos will appear in Android’s Photo Picker.

If you’re not that acquainted with Android’s Photo Picker, I don’t blame you, since there aren’t lots of apps on the market that put it to use proper now. The Photo Picker is accessible natively on all units working Android 11 and newer because it’s a part of an updatable Project Mainline module, however it’s additionally out there on units working Android variations way back to Android 4.4 because of a backported model offered by Google Play Services. Here’s what the Photo Picker presently seems to be like in the event you had been to search out an app that invokes it:

What Android’s Photo Picker seems to be like with out cloud media assist

As you may see, the Photo Picker has two tabs: “Photos” and “Albums”. The “Photos” tab exhibits you all of your photographs, movies, or each in reverse chronological order. The “Albums” tab exhibits you media gadgets from the Camera, Videos, Screenshots, Downloads, and Favorites albums in your machine. If you retailer all of your media recordsdata domestically in your machine, then the Photo Picker will present each media file you would probably need to share. However, in the event you retailer most of your photographs and movies on Google Photos, then Android’s Photo Picker will be lacking lots of gadgets.

Google knew this is able to be an issue for a lot of customers, which is why they designed Android’s Photo Picker to assist deciding on gadgets from cloud media suppliers from the get-go. Cloud media suppliers don’t mechanically appear in Android’s Photo Picker, although; they should implement an API that provides apps read-only entry to media recordsdata saved in the cloud. This 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 Photo Picker supplants for choosing media recordsdata, has a extra dated UI however provides broader entry to recordsdata from native and cloud storage suppliers. It will be invoked instantly or not directly (leftmost picture, tapping the “browse” button).

The identical can’t be mentioned for the brand new Photo Picker, which nonetheless hasn’t had a single cloud media supplier built-in with it. This is despite the fact that again at I/O 2022, a yr and a half in the past, Google mentioned that cloud media suppliers like Google Photos will be supported in an upcoming replace. This is finally coming to fruition soon, although, since current variations of the Google Photos app have added full assist for Android’s Photo Picker.

After activating this characteristic, a brand new “Cloud media app” web page seems underneath Settings > Apps. Here, we had been in a position to activate Google Photos as a cloud media supplier for Android’s Photo Picker. Enabling this characteristic additionally opened up a brand new “Google Photos access” choice in the settings web page for the Google Photos app. This choice results in an in-app “Photo picker” web page that permits you to resolve whether or not to grant the Photo Picker entry to the photographs and movies you’ve saved on Google Photos.

The numerous methods you may set Google Photos because the cloud media supplier for Android’s Photo Picker.

With Google Photos now set because the cloud media supplier, the Photo Picker is ready to pull in the photographs and movies I backed as much as the cloud. This vastly expands the variety of media recordsdata I can share with an app, as proven beneath.

A take a look at Android’s Photo Picker with cloud media assist.

Even with this growth, nonetheless, the Photo 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 recordsdata saved in these albums by scrolling by means of the “Photos” tab. Second, cloud media gadgets aren’t proven when the Photo Picker is invoked by means of the permissions dialog, which is a part of a brand new characteristic launched in Android 14 that lets customers grant apps partial entry to photographs and movies. That means cloud media gadgets are solely when the Photo Picker is invoked by an app. Fortunately, this is applicable even when an app indirectly invokes the Photo Picker, as is the case in apps like Google Chat and Google Keep following a current Google Play System Update.

Hopefully, Google rolls out this characteristic soon to customers because the lack of cloud media assist in the Photo Picker is partly why many builders aren’t using it in their apps but. After Google Photos integrates with the Photo Picker, hopefully, different cloud media suppliers like Microsoft OneDrive observe swimsuit.