Hi all. I recently got a Pixel 8, and it’s my first ever Android phone. I’m loving it so far and glad I switched over. One thing that’s honestly driving me crazy though is the photo picker. On iPhone it was easy to pick a photo directly within the Messages or any other app, either a recent one, a favorites one, or one from an album, with just a few taps. When I use the photo picker from within the Messages (or other app) on my Pixel, though, it feels incredibly convoluted. First it pulls up a grid of 5-ish recent pictures, followed by rows and rows of seemingly random pictures from the past 20 years. To get to my favorites, for instance, I have to tap on the folder icon, then tap the three dots, tap browse, tap Photos, tap Photos again, then tap favorites. Is this really how it’s supposed to work, or is there a setting I can change somewhere? I’ve double checked that Messages has permission to access all photos and videos. Thanks in advance for any help!
I never use SMS to I was wondering what you were talking about, and now that I’ve tried Messages I’m absolutely appaled by the design of the file picker. I think Google stole Discord’s design, but somehow made it worse? A year ago, I would’ve said “try Signal for SMS” but that no longer works because of RCS fuckery. This is infuriating. I’m glad everybody is ignoring Google’s request to use this new image picker.
After a bit of testing, the best workaround I’ve found is clicking the “files” button to launch the normal (non-image-optimised) file picker. It should open a generic file browser, in which you have the option to filter images or videos, like so:
Tall media, click to expand
It still doesn’t exactly provide fast access to your favourites, but it skips two steps at least. Google Photos is in the “Browse files in other apps” shortcut when opening the generic file picker.
Alternatively, you could do things in reverse: open the picture you want to share, then use the share button to select a contact to send it to.
This stupid image picker doesn’t seem to be restricted to Google Messages, either. Apparently they’re recommending developers to use this screen in their apps, and they’ve backported this thing to older Android versions as well.
Thanks! Glad to hear I’m not the only one who is flabbergasted by this design, but kinda bummed it wasn’t just user error. I appreciate the suggestions for workarounds.