It may soon be easier to pull pictures from your Google Photos library into Android apps, as a new change in the system’s photo picker will integrate with cloud storage apps.

With Android 13, Google started pushing a new system-wide photo picker that allows apps to import photos without first requesting permission to actually view your photo library. Instead, Android would pull up a dedicated UI that could display photos stored on your device and provide only your selected photos to the app. This new method isn’t used universally, but a fair number of apps have adopted it.

But, obviously, there’s a clear gap in the functionality.

While we do store a lot of photos and videos locally, many users also take advantage of cloud storage solutions such as Google Photos. Seemingly, that’s why Google is preparing to make some updates.

As spotted by Android Authority, the Android photo picker is adding support for a “cloud media app” option, through which users can choose to designate an app on their device to show its library in the photo picker. This will apparently support Google Photos, but seems like it could eventually support other apps, too.

Google previously mentioned this was coming, but the functionality is still not live.

When this might go live is unclear, but manually turning on support for Google Photos in the Android photo picker works just fine in Android 14. So it does seem that this is coming soon rather than later.

Image Credits: Android Authority

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