MacKuba

(See full blog post here)

Current full photo library access: your app has full access to all contents of user’s photo library, can read and write to the photo database

Limited mode: you only have access to “user’s limited library selection” – a kind of filter for the photo library

You can only fetch assets and resources related to what the user has chosen to give you access to

When the user updates the selection, your app is notified so you can update your UI

This affects all apps using photo library, even apps that are already live

When the user is asked for access to photos, they can choose: Allow access to all / Don’t allow / Select photos

Selected photo set can be changed in the Settings

If an app hasn’t made any changes to support this new mode yet, you will be asked if you want to change selection every time the app accesses the photo library after a restart

Users usually have thousands or tens of thousands of photos in their library, possibly from many years, but they almost never want an app to have access to all of them

How can you use the photo library without requesting access to it at all?

If your app only needs to let you choose a photo for an avatar, or to post to a chat  ⭢  use system photo picker (PHPickerViewController)

• replacement for UIImagePickerController
• improved with search and multi-select
• doesn’t require user to grant photo library access

If you only need to save photos and images to the library, you can ask for add-only access

Full access makes sense for apps like photo browsing and editing apps, camera or backup apps

When asking for and checking authorization, you need to specify PHAccessLevel: .readWrite / .addOnly

PHPhotoLibrary.authorizationStatus(for: accessLevel)

If the user gave you limited access (only to a subset of photos), then authorizationStatus == .limited

When requesting access, you can just send a request to the photo library when the user performs an action that requires it, and the popup will appear automatically

If you want to request access explicitly without making a request, do:

PHPhotoLibrary.requestAuthorization(for: accessLevel) { … }

Older authorizationStatus() and requestAuthorization(_ handler:) APIs will be deprecated and will just return .authorized

Other APIs should work the same regardless of access, they will just return fewer items if access is limited

A few exceptions:

• assets created by your app are automatically accessible to your app
• you can’t create or fetch user’s albums in limited mode
• no assets to cloud shared assets or albums

If you want to let the user update the selection:

• call PHPhotoLibrary.shared().presentLimitedLibraryPicker(from: viewController)
• monitor changes through PHPhotoLibraryChangeObserver
• you may want to add some new button in the UI that lets the user access this screen

To prevent the selection alert from appearing after a relaunch, add the key PHPhotoLibraryPreventAutomaticLimitedAccessAlert to Info.plist

Steps to take when updating:

1. 1. Reconsider if your app needs photo library access at all  ⭢  consider using system picker instead, or asking for write-only access
2. 2. Adopt the new authorization APIs
3. 3. Add a button which lets the user access the library selection UI if it makes sense
4. 4. Add the Info.plist key to prevent the alert