Even though Google Photos doesn’t have unlimited storage anymore, it still lets you backup and save your photos, videos, and memories, so you don’t have to keep them on your smartphone’s local storage. Since the photos are uploaded to the cloud, though, you usually can’t see them on your phone unless you actually open the Google Photos application. That’s about to change.
Now, Google has added the ability for the photo picker to actually see images that are stored on cloud apps such as Google Photos. You can access both local and backed-up photos without switching between apps, streamlining the process of selecting images and videos. With albums from cloud storage readily available within the photo picker, organizing and finding media can be a lot eaiser, especially if you offload images and videos to the cloud frequently.
This feature is not limited to Google Photos, at least in theory. It’s open to any cloud media app that qualifies for the pilot program, which could mean OneDrive, Dropbox, and other cloud storage services with photo backup might support the same feature. Google Photos is first in line being a Google app, but the pilot program is opening up to other non-Google apps before, perhaps, making the APIs public for everyone. There are some more niche services that could benefit from this, like NextCloud, so hopefully the functionality won’t be closed off for forever.
The one catch here is that applications have to be updated to use the modern photo picker, which will then enable the cloud storage integration and other features. There are a few applications that have already updated, such as Chrome and other Google applications, but many others have not made the switch. The new cloud photos integration could help push applications to use the new picker, but in the meantime, you might not see it in your favorite apps.
The new cloud storage integration is rolling out with the February Google System Update to all devices running Android 12 or above. The modern photo picker technically works on Android 4.4 and newer, if the application has switched to it, but the cloud integration doesn’t work that far back.
Source: Google
