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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.
Similar situation with WhatsApp on Android: you can’t share images or videos without giving the app full access to your entire filesystem. You also can’t video or voice call without giving the app full phone permissions.
Other apps happily let you do all of those things. You can just Share an image from some other app. But nope, WhatsApp just refuses.
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!
And with GrapheneOS, I can even scope contacts
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.
WhatsApp is awful with permissions. I couldn’t find a way to use it without giving it access to all my contacts. I installed it on the work profile and uninstalled it as soon as I didn’t need it anymore.
In many countries around the world it’s the only way people communicate. If I want to keep in contact with my family (and I do), I have no choice but to use it.
I’ve tried to get them on Telegram or Signal, no luck.
If they won’t convert to signal then oh well.
People got along fine before what’s app. Just don’t use it.
making me repeat myself… grumble…
If I want to keep in contact with my family (and I do), I have no choice but to use it.
You have a choice. You don’t have to use it. People managed for thousands of years, you can too.
Have some principles. If they can’t or won’t change, don’t make it your problem.
They will come around if and when you take it seriously. Or they won’t, and then well, fuck em.
I have family around the world. Some said they can’t change, that’s on them. Others did and that’s fine. But nobody is going to if you cave and enable them to just keep doing it.
I’m sorry that your relationship with your family is so unimportant to you that you think it’s better to cut them off entirely from your life than to use something you dislike.
Its fine. In sorry you are so unimportant to your family that they don’t care about anything but themselves.
In the end though, there are lots of ways to communicate, and making a stand for something causes change.
Being unable to change from a data harvesting societal ill is troubling.
But if you care about any of that, why the fuck would you use WhatsApp!
Because everyone uses whatsapp. For most there isn’t really an option of not using whatsapp. Though more and more people are switching to signal nowadays, which is good to see.