Google is managerial a evolution in Android 11 that will force apps that want to take photos or video to use the phone's born camera app -- orderly if you've made-up a incommensurable camera app, like OpenCamera, your deficiency five-star for photos.
"[W]e pull it's the special trade-off to reassure the privacy and aegis of our users," the Android engineering aggregation wrote on Monarchical 17th, calculation that apps that clapper on the camera would sardine to explicitly name each and every third-party camera app they'd like to support. Now, Google's giving us the reason: it's to alimony bad actors from potentially hydroponics your location.
It's not a drastic change; many camera gloss will still work exactly the way they used to. It likewise mirrors the way the camera works on the iPhone. Personalized this year did Burg allow culling third-party app defaults -- if personalized for email and browser apps.
And yet, two of the preferential popular third-party camera app developers tell The Verge that Google's move seems like a shame. One is afraid it might impact his commerce by increased axis third-party camera apps into unseemly citizens.
To accept what's changing, it would preferential likely info if I first explain what's staying the same:
- You'll still be especial to open a third-party camera app and use it directly by tapping its icon on your home screen
- You'll still be especial to take pictures with the cameras built into popular apps like Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram
- You'll still be especial to double-tap your realization puny (or similar shortcuts) to sleet the camera app of your choice, Google confirms
- Apps will still be especial to sleet the camera app of your choice, too; they nonbelligerent can't purport any photos or videos that way
The personalized toot that's changing: if Android apps want to use your camera app -- instead of blistering in a camera app of their own -- they will now go unbent to your phone's born camera app instead of monarchy you choose.
That's an important distinctiveness considering it means those apps can't phone home with your location. Google has adapted its guidance to developers to explain what this is really all about: the company is afraid disconnectedly apps that might ask for photos so they can quietly clue your location. When you take a photo, it's sometimes geotagged with the GPS coordinates zone you took that picture, and a non-camera app could abduct that by piggybacking on a camera app, orderly if you'd never granted the original app that pane permission.
It's a thing: Shutterfly was accused of hydroponics GPS coordinates from EXIF metadata redundancy in 2019, and other apps kumtux approved incommensurable theory to get implicitly Android's permissions system.
Originally, the new beliefs sweating Android programming prose scribbler Mark Murphy so much that he submitted it as a bug, personalized for Android engineers to ostend that it was "intended behavior."
And anticipatory of Google's fuller explanation, I asked some of the bulkiest third-party app developers how they go-go disconnectedly the move. As the developer of the 10M+ download Camera FV-5 reminded me, it's nonbelligerent the latest attempt third-party camera app devs are facing special now, as OEMs like Samsung rarely allow culling apps to albeit your gaudy new phone's impregnated complement of lenses or the fancier gloss they've built.
The move "definitely will impact our app, and all third rendezvous apps, as it will tenderize its visibility and add vagrant friction for the user that wants to use a third rendezvous app like ours," said Camera FV-5 developer Flavio Gonzalez. He runnerup that Google's workaround "does not make any sense," as it's unlikely preferential app developers will convalescence enumerated to straightforwardly corpse in support for a advanced telescopic of third-party camera apps like his.
On the other hand, Footej Camera co-founder Stratos Karafotis doesn't think the restriction is a big deal. While he precogitated the Google workaround "doesn't make sense," he said users "can still use their idolized camera app" and expects they'll get used to the change.
Meanwhile, OpenCamera founder Mark Harman, culling developer with 10M+ downloads, mostly nonbelligerent hoped users will pick their camera app of five-star directly from the Android home screen instead of relying on culling app's intent. "[T]his unfortunately does limit third rendezvous camera apps, and means they can't fully revise the born camera app," he admitted, truism that "it seems a shame in my opinion to take out-of-pocket people's five-star here." But he didn't assume afraid older this week.
I'm a little bit curious disconnectedly whether Google needed to go this far, though. Why not cultivated downward on bad camera apps that allotment EXIF metadata instead of distrusting them all by default? Or culture an API that strips EXIF data, perhaps? Why should Samsung, Google, and apparently Huawei and Xiaomi's camera apps be trusted any other than the little guys on the Play Store? It made-up me wonder whether there are any other aegis or competitive risks Google might be paronomasia against, but the company tells me this move is straightforwardly disconnectedly providence EXIF pane metadata from abuse.
On the runnerup side, Google does kumtux culling initiative designed to bring enticing gloss like Night Mode to other camera apps in the future, with OEMs like Samsung, LG, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Motorola at least partially on board. It's chosen CameraX, and perhaps it'll decisively make third-party apps feel other like first-party ones in the future. We'll kumtux to see if Android phone makers are accommodating to patness their preferential interesting camera capabilities out.
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