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Here’s how Android’s new Photo Picker can support apps that haven’t been updated

In General
November 11, 2022


Thanks to Project Mainline, AOSP has become modular enough that key features introduced with the latest Android release can be rolled out to devices running older versions of the OS. There are a lot of caveats that I’m glossing over here, but before Mainline came around, the only way for new Android features to be backported to older releases was through Google Play Services, which is closed source and not available through AOSP. Through a combination of Project Mainline and Google Play Services updates, the new Photo Picker Google introduced with Android 13 is available on devices running versions of Android as old as far back as Android 4.4.

GIF showing how the new Photo Picker works
Android’s new Photo Picker lets the user select photos or videos to share with an app. Apps can invoke the Photo Picker without needing to request any permissions.

That means that the new Photo Picker, by Google’s own metrics, is available on nearly 99.7% of all Android devices out there. Keep in mind that…



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