Google is rolling out a server-side update to the Photo Picker to make it work with existing apps! In certain apps when you tap to pick an image or video, you’ll be met by the new Photo Picker instead of the old system file picker.
How does this work for certain apps without them needing any code changes? Well, it’s because the Photo Picker is now responding to the GET_CONTENT intent instead of DocumentsUI.
If you want to test this out, the best way is to use Google Keep as we demonstrate. Alternatively, you can run ‘cmd device_config get storage_native_boot take_over_get_content’ in the shell and if it returns ‘true’, then this feature has rolled out.
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*To be more precise, the update to the Photo Picker already happened. The GET_CONTENT takeover has existed in MediaProvider since version 330811020 a few months back. What Google did is a server-side change of the DeviceConfig flag that gates the feature.
EDIT: Thanks to this update, the number of apps you can invoke the Photo Picker through has gone up by a lot. I’ve seen/heard:
- Google Chat
- Google Keep
- Slack
- Messages
- Element
- Snapseed
- Sync for Reddit
- Reddit is Fun
No Signal, FB, or Telegram though.
Because of how this works, invoking the Photo Picker may seem awkward in some of these apps. You may have to grant the app permission to read your gallery just to access the area/button where the Picker can be launched, or you may have to hit some menu item then “Gallery”, etc.