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Comment by alunchbox | Hacker News Reader

Hmm. Would it be possible to run these Apps in a VM like container? allow it access a dummy, empty folder to read from somewhat of a container for all apps? then there would be a manual transfer process between the shared folders after you've saved an image?

So when downloading an App it will ask would you want to run this in an isolated environment? and you can, so if it tries to scan over your photo gallery it will have an empty folder etc..

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This is a scoping issue. On iOS devices at least no app has access to your photo gallery unless they explicitly prompt you for permission.

That said, many apps need access to the photo gallery - say I want to put a screenshot into discord. The issue is that now Discord has access to ALL of my photos.

There needs to be more scoping options. "Allow access to previous 12 photos while you're using the app" kinda deal.

On iOS is't possible to ask the system to present a photo picker on behalf of the app without requiring a permission to look into your photos.

So I’ve heard about this feature before but I’m not sure it actually exists? From the Photos app you can only share specific photos with specific apps that add themselves to the popout menu. If you disable Photos access to any of these apps they will just ask that you re-enable full photo access.

It does exist, I have an app that manipulates photos and if you reject photos permission you can still use the photo picker and get access to one photo of the user's choice. You can't directly save to the photos library, but you can save it via a system share sheet.

Most apps don't make that obvious though, and imply that they need full photos access to work (Or they don't give options to use the system picker/system share sheet.)

I'm not an iOS developer but if it does exist not many apps use it. Snapchat, MS Teams, Discord, and a few others don't do it by default at least.

The iOS-native UI is not customizable, that should be the main reason.

Apple really should force their hand and mandate that this is the only way to get a photo upload. I hate all the sweeping permissions nearly every app for iOS demands. Where's the sandboxing?

I just checked with Teams, when you click on the image it brings up the image picker.

It’s not ideal, but most iOS apps that take images will accept pasted images. You can avoid giving them photos access, and instead copy/paste from the Photos app.

This works with many messaging apps, but I don't find it works with apps that don't have a textbox meant for pasting photos; the UI assumes the only way the user wants to share photos is by enabling Photos access.

You can view the photo in Gallery, and then select to share with one of the actions at the bottom, and the app only gets access to the photo you select.

I think Apple wouldn't be too happy in the App Store Review process if they find out your app is uploading pictures without user interaction.

Or make it even simpler - split read and write access. Camera/Photos are already split, but I should have the ability to let an app save a photo without having to grant it complete access to my photo library.

There are a number of ways around that.

- Discord can have a share sheet extension that is accessible from the popup that appears when you take a screenshot.

- You can copy and paste the image.

- the app can bring up a photo picker.

> to run these Apps in a VM like container?

That's what Xposed Framework does exactly.

> allow it access a dummy, empty folder to read from

That's what Xposed XPrivacyLua plugin does exactly.

https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua

Thanks I'll check this out!

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