iOS 14 Privacy: Users Can Give Apps Access to Limited Selection of Photos
A new privacy feature in iOS 14 enables users to give an app access to a limited number of photos, instead of having to hand over the keys to their entire photo library.
The new app permissions feature was spotted in the iOS 14 beta by Benedict Evans, who shared a couple of screenshots of it in action.
When an app requests access to photos on a device, the user can now choose from three options: Select
Photos…, Allow Access to All Photos, or Don't Allow.
An iOS privacy awareness pane explains it like so:
Your photos and memories are personal. Apple's new privacy controls let you decide what photos and videos you share. When an app asks for permission to access your photo library, you have the choice to select specific items or allow access to all photos and videos.
The change is a nice improvement to the current binary option of either denying an app access to your photos or allowing it to get at your entire library of images. It should come in especially handy for when users want to give an app one-off access to a single photo, for example.
Apple has been keen to promote the new privacy features coming in iOS 14. Other iOS 14 privacy highlights covered at WWDC 2020 include the ability to give an app your approximate location instead of your precise location, App Store privacy lists for all apps, clipboard restrictions, and camera and microphone access attempt notifications.
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Top Rated Comments
I suppose you could put a “dummy” photo in your library, set the app permission to only read that blank photo, and it’ll still be allowed to write new photos.
So like Chrome on my iPad doesn't have specific photos access, yet I can still open photos to choose a pic to upload, but Twitter has read/write access, so technically it can add a photo, or read any photo from my entire library (which, come to think of it ... is creepy ... o_O ) So an app, without photos permission, can still do things like open a file picker to upload something like a profile photo, but it doesn't have any persistent access after that operation.
Been using the hidden folder to hide photos that contain ID and and account information. Now with this new feature I don't have to wonder if these apps are rifling thru my photos or even the thumbnails.
Would be neat to have an advanced audit feature where you could look at a log of all the photo/mic/location/data an app has viewed/copied to itself and when.
I disable a lot of apps cellular data to stop ads and phoning home, would be nice to also block WiFi access too.