Cloud photographs now obtainable within the Android picture picker

Posted by Roxanna Aliabadi Walker – Product Supervisor

Accessible now with Google Images

Our picture picker has at all times been the gateway to your native media library, offering a safe, date-sorted interface for customers to grant apps entry to chose photos and movies. However now, we’re taking it a step additional by integrating cloud photographs out of your chosen cloud media app instantly into the picture picker expertise.

Unifying your media library

Backed-up photographs, often known as “cloud photographs,” will now be merged along with your native ones within the picture picker, eliminating the necessity to change between apps. Moreover, any albums you have created in your cloud storage app will likely be readily accessible throughout the picture picker’s albums tab. In case your cloud media supplier has an idea of “favorites,” they are going to be showcased prominently throughout the albums tab of the picture picker for straightforward entry. This characteristic is at the moment rolling out with the February Google System Replace to units operating Android 12 and above.

Accessible now with Google Images, however open to all

Google Images is already supporting this new characteristic, and our APIs are open to any cloud media app that qualifies for our pilot program. Our aim is to make accessing your lifetime of recollections easy, whatever the app you favor.

The Android picture picker will try and auto-select a cloud media app for you, however you possibly can change or take away your chosen cloud media app at any time from picture picker settings.

Migrate right this moment for an enhanced, frictionless expertise

The Android picture picker considerably reduces friction by not requiring any runtime permissions. If you happen to change from utilizing a customized picture picker to the Android picture picker, you possibly can supply this enhanced expertise with cloud photographs to your customers, in addition to scale back or solely eradicate the overhead concerned with buying and managing entry to photographs on the gadget. (Word that apps and not using a want for persistent and/or broad scale entry to photographs – for instance – to set a profile image, should undertake the Android picture picker in lieu of any delicate file permissions to stick to Google Play coverage).

The picture picker has been backported to Android 4.4 to make it simple emigrate with no need to fret about gadget compatibility. Entry to cloud content material will solely be obtainable for customers operating Android 12 and better, however builders don’t want to contemplate this when implementing the picture picker into their apps. To make use of the picture picker in your app, replace the ActivityX dependency to model 1.7.x or above and add the next code snippet:

// Registers a photograph picker exercise launcher in single-choose mode.
val pickMedia = registerForActivityResult(PickVisualMedia()) { uri ->
    // Callback is invoked after the consumer selects a media merchandise or closes the
    // picture picker.
    if (uri != null) {
        Log.d("PhotoPicker", "Chosen URI: $uri")
    } else {
        Log.d("PhotoPicker", "No media chosen")
    }
}


// Launch the picture picker and let the consumer select photos and movies.
pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.ImageAndVideo))

// Launch the picture picker and let the consumer select solely photos.
pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.ImageOnly))

// Launch the picture picker and let the consumer select solely movies.
pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.VideoOnly))