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I think Android does/ can do just that? There's a native photo picking intent, and the app just gets back a photo. Whether it was from the camera, the gallery, etc, who cares?

In practice, most apps would rather have their own in-app photo grid. Nothing to do with wanting to violate your privacy, I'm sure :)



The photo picking intent leads to a confusing UI - it's common for phones to have many photo picking intents, so a typical flow would be:

* User clicks "attach photo"

* Phone asks, do you want to use "Photos", "Gallery", "Google Photos", "Camera".

* User wants to share a screenshot - so they don't know which to pick. They choose "Gallery".

* The built in gallery app doesn't show images apart from those taken with the camera. User goes back.

* User picks "Google Photos"

* Google photos only shows screenshots under a confusingly named "device folders" link in a hidden-by-default side menu. User doesn't find that.

* User tries "Photos".

* That turns out to be an alias of Google Photos put there by the phone manufacturer.

* User tries "Camera". That lets them take a picture, or to scroll through another list of past camera photos.

* User gives up.

And we wonder why apps don't use that feature of the platform...


iOS does as well. An app can use the system photo picker to allow the user to select a single/multiple photos without having "Photos" permission.

The problem is that granting full save permission also grants read permission, it would be more ideal if those were split.


I know it certainly has a photopicker but I don't know if you have to have filesystem access to pick one or if you can save photos.




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