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Google photos on ios is literally a hostage situation. Remove key functionalities like copying an image or editing an image unless you give them full unrestricted access to your entire photo library. (The holy grail of surveillance capitalism data). Data extortion masquerading as a service.
I have WhatsApp on Android and have restricted its access to my photos. Every time I want to share an image I need to first select which new photos I want to give Whatsapp access to, then select the photos again to send them. Next time I tap to share an image I won't see any new photos in the options no matter how many new photos are in my gallery.
I can also share to Whatsapp from my gallery, which will prompt again the permission for this individual photo thing. Same.
maybe they're serving different versions of the app to different regions or something. I am 100% sure this doesn't work for me.
Glad they allow selective sharing on iOS
apparently this works on Android as well, see other replies :)
That is a an Android feature. A user can select the media they want to share without giving full access to the media folder. It was introduced with Android 14.
And apps have to support it, which WhatsApp doesn't
Edit: I was wrong, see below
Not sure about that because I can use it with WhatsApp.
I don't want to talk you into accidentally allowing access to all your photos. But I believe if you tap settings there, or if you long press your app icon to go to settings and then navigate to permissions, you will find the screen where you can choose never allow, always allow, and allow limited access which is the one you want.
Well what do you know, it worked! Thanks!
I allowed limited access and then selected nothing. Now I can send images and videos by sharing them from elsewhere.
Woohoo!
Preload vs play store version?
play store. what's preload?
So a many oems load on versions of apps from Meta and other developers as preloads on the phone so they are there day one when you first launch the OS. These versions of the apps are not subject to Play store policy restrictions around permissions and other data privacy things, and are generally far more privacy invasive than their Play store equivalents. I usually advise people to disable or uninstall preloaded versions as much as possible and try to get the Play store versions instead.