Solved: Re: Samsung S21 Gallery App

wolfnowl · ‎31-08-2023

Hi There:

I have a Samsung Galaxy S21 and it's worked fine until the last month or two. Here's the challenge. Let's say I open an app - e-mail, IG, Mastodon or whatever, and I want to add an image. I have several Albums in my Gallery, but it used to be a simple matter of choosing to add an image, going to an Album, selecting the image(s) and I was good to go.

Not anymore. Now when I do that it opens up a window that says, "This app can only access the photos you select."

Under that it says Photo (recents) and Albums - BUT - the only albums that show up are Camera, Screenshots and Downloads. If I have an image in any other Album, too bad. The Album isn't shown.

Now, on SOME apps there's a three-dot menu, and if I click on that I can navigate to Browse... (brings up Downloads) - then I hit the hamburger menu in the top left and click Gallery and NOW I have access to my Albums. NB: I have to do this for EVERY IMAGE, and some apps don't provide the menu option. The only way to attach an image from those apps is to open the Gallery app, go to the album, select the image(s) copy the image(s) to the Camera folder, go back to the app and select the image from the Camera album.

This is seriously screwed.

I went into Apps and discovered that there's not one but two Gallery apps installed. One is 7.38MB and the other is 44.24MB. I initially discovered that the first Gallery app had the Photos and Videos permissions turned off (for some inexplicable reason) but I enabled that and no change. I tried force stopping the first Gallery app - no change. Doing a hard boot makes no difference. There has to be some obscure permissions bug but I have no idea where it is. I'm tempted to copy all of the Albums onto my PC, uninstalling both Gallery apps and reinstalling one to see if that works.

Thanks,

Mike.

willcranston · ‎01-09-2023

That sounds like it is the new feature from the Pixel phones. It enables more privacy by only letting the selected apps access only the photos you select. https://www.xda-developers.com/android-14-photo-picker-forced/

wolfnowl · ‎02-09-2023

Thanks for the reply, but I believe this is different. Currently running Android 13, One UI 5.1.

If no one has any suggestions I'm going to move the images off my phone, uninstall both Gallery apps and try reinstalling one. See if that helps.

Mike.

Mellowbubble · ‎27-12-2023

Did you resolve this issue? I've been experiencing the same and can't select files to upload. It shows document, photo and video pages as blank white. No selections unless they're my latest camera roll or screenshots. So frustrating when trying to upload files to websites.

wolfnowl · ‎27-12-2023

Unfortunately it's still the same. What I can do is this (depending on the app):

For example, let's say I want to embed an image into an e-mail. I click to add the image and it opens a window with Photos and Albums. Almost all of the Albums are missing. To the right of Albums is a three-dot menu. Tap that and tap Browse...

That opens to the Downloads folder, but I don't want Downloads. In the top left of the screen there's a three-line hamburger menu. Tap that and go down to Gallery. Tap that and it opens my Gallery where I can access the Album I want and the image I want. That's WAY more complicated than it needs to be, and some apps (like Mastodon) don't offer the Browse... option. For Mastodon (for example) I can start at the Gallery and share to Mastodon, but with e-mail sharing an image will attach it but won't allow inserting it into the e-mail body. Something seriously screwy with Samsung's OS build, even after updating the UI to 6.0 (Android 14).

Mike.

wolfnowl · ‎29-12-2023

Okay... after reading @Mellowbubble 's question, I went back to the reply by @willcranston and especially the linked article. I believe I've discovered the why this is happening, but only Samsung can resolve it.

As I mentioned in my first post when trying to access images from the various apps on my phone, I get a message that says, "This app can only access the photos you select."

According to this article: https://www.xda-developers.com/android-14-photo-picker-forced/ Android 14 (and retroactively to Android 13 in some cases), allows the user to specify which apps have access to which images, as shown here (image from article):

Now, as I understand it, Google provides the Android OS, but in so doing it allows other companies (like Samsung) to write their own software that sits on top of it. In this case it's Samsung UI 6.0 If I go to the Apps permissions on my phone, what I see is this:

So what's happening is that Android has created a granularity for the user to choose which images are available for which apps, but the Samsung software that sits on top of Android isn't making that option available to the user. By default, then, the Android OS is only allowing access to the system default folders because nothing else has been enabled.

So far as I can see that's what's happening, but as I say, only Samsung can edit their Apps Permissions to give users access to the level of permission required by Android.

Mike.

tberge · ‎07-07-2024

This was marked as solved but it seems it wasn't. I am having the exact same issue on a Galaxy s24, but it also occurred on my previous s23. The article doesn't help at all, I cannot give permission to several apps to see all albums. This is beyond frustrating.

wolfnowl · ‎07-07-2024

tberge: I wouldn't say it was resolved, only that unless/until Samsung changes its OS to reflect the upgraded app permissions, there's nothing you or I can do about it.

As it is now, the images you have access to depends on the app you're using. For example, if I want to access an image stored in a (non-default) folder on my phone (say, "Mike's images") I have a few options. I can go to my Gallery app, go to the folder, select the image and click Share. That generally works. However, if I do that with my e-mail app, it will attach the image to the message rather than embedding it into the body of the message. If I want to do that, I have a couple of options. One is to select the image and copy it somewhere like the Camera folder. That, all apps can access. Of course, depending on how many images you have in your Camera folder, it may be challenging to find it. If you've uploaded your images to Google Photos you can organize them into folders there and access them from the cloud. Given the photo-stealing AI bots out there, that's entirely up to you. Depending on your app (like the afore-mentioned e-mail app), what I can do is choose to embed an image, Pictures icon to bring up the images - I receive a message saying, "This app can only access the photos you select" - that's the Android photo permissions. Click the 3 dot menu on the right, click Browse and it will come up with the contents of the Downloads folder. Click the hamburger menu at the top left (beside Downloads) and click on Gallery. NOW you have access to all of the images/ albums in your gallery. NB: You have to repeat this for each image if you want to embed two or more. I didn't say it was fun, or easy, but it's possible. If/when Samsung will update their OS is not a question I can answer.

Mike.

tberge · ‎12-07-2024

Thank you for the detailed response and tips! It seems that some apps have improved their coding to deal with this issue. On several of my apps I now have the ability to change the permissions from select media to all media, which is great. Some of them do not, however and still require the long and tedious way around it but it's good to know there at least is another option.

Members_JDM23Xh · ‎30-08-2024

For the Google Slides app, the "Photos and videos" option does not show up in the permissions. So I have no way to reset the permission.