Last Updated on 24/05/2021 by Khushi
image courtesy: android police
When you try to erase a file, the Google Photos app on your smartphone currently displays a prompt. If you’re deleting a lot of pictures, this prompt will quickly become irritating. Fortunately, beginning with Android 12, the software would no longer need to show any reminders and would be able to uninstall your images immediately.
According to an update to the Android Developers site’s Media management control portion, apps targeting Android 12 APIs would no longer need to show an uninstall alert for each file activity.
The explanation Google Photos and other gallery apps on Android 11 ask for permission to delete a file is complicated, but it comes down to the fact that they are not the device gallery client (they are third party apps). This isn’t true for Pixel phones, where the Photos app serves as the device gallery, but Pixel users never see this pop-up. However, Google Photos is not (and cannot be set as) the machine gallery software on most smartphones from Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, ASUS, and others. Fortunately, Android 12 no longer does this.
Google revised its “features and APIs overview” page with a section on “media management access” alongside the announcement of the first Android 12 Beta at Google I/O 2021. According to Google, an app targeting API level 31 (Android 12) will ask users to give it permission to change files, transfer files into and out of the garbage, or remove files without prompting the user for each file action.
If an app has been upgraded to target Android 12, all it needs to do to take advantage of this new feature is announce three permissions (Manae Media, Read external Storage, and Access media location), display a UI to the user explaining why the app requires data management access, and guide the user to the new “media management apps” screen on Android 12 to grant it permission.
Image courtesy: xda developers
The majority of gallery applications are yet to be updated to take advantage of it. Moreover, to access it, the Google Photos app will still need to be updated. Few users are running the Android 12 beta, and the majority of them are presumably on Pixel phones, where there isn’t even a problem, so there isn’t likely to be any pressure on Google to upgrade the Photos app right away. Further, they will issue an update before Android 12 is released to the first batch of non-Pixel phones in a few months.
