Cloud images now accessible within the Android picture picker

Posted by Roxanna Aliabadi Walker – Product Supervisor

Out there now with Google Images

Our picture picker has all the time 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 images out of your chosen cloud media app straight into the picture picker expertise.

Unifying your media library

Backed-up images, also called “cloud images,” will now be merged along with your native ones within the picture picker, eliminating the necessity to swap between apps. Moreover, any albums you have created in your cloud storage app will likely be readily accessible inside the picture picker’s albums tab. In case your cloud media supplier has an idea of “favorites,” they are going to be showcased prominently inside the albums tab of the picture picker for straightforward entry. This function is at present rolling out with the February Google System Replace to gadgets working Android 12 and above.

Out there now with Google Images, however open to all

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

The Android picture picker will try to 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 now for an enhanced, frictionless expertise

The Android picture picker considerably reduces friction by not requiring any runtime permissions. Should you swap from utilizing a customized picture picker to the Android picture picker, you possibly can provide this enhanced expertise with cloud images to your customers, in addition to cut back or solely eradicate the overhead concerned with buying and managing entry to images on the system. (Observe that apps and not using a want for persistent and/or broad scale entry to images – 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 straightforward emigrate without having to fret about system compatibility. Entry to cloud content material will solely be accessible for customers working 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))