Android noob struggling with photo picker

KidDogDad@lemmy.world to Android@lemmy.world – 26 points –

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!

10

Couldn't replace.

When I try adding a photo in messages I get a grid with a viewfinder (which is really cool and clever) and a few recent photos. Tapping folders brings up all the photos on my phone in chronological order. I can't see though how to open Google photos from this screen to get non local photos.

Also in typical android I've never seen this set up on any other app.

I'm on a pixel 6 and in messages, I have a tile view of most recent created/modified photos, whether that's download, camera, whatever folder.

For a specific folder of older images, I usually click into the camera with two taps of the power button and get into photos library that way.

I don't know if that's the best way, just how I get into all the folders if the photos are older

Yeah I think I'm just going to need to build muscle memory to do it that way instead. I think it's especially not useful for me because I recently imported all of my photos from iCloud. A whole bunch of what shows for me are old engagement photos of me and my ex. 😂

Haha, rough.

Especially with a newer phone, it's easy to have one app for every function without overloading the memory, so I'm sure if you look through different available photo apps there will be one where you can set a group of your favorite folders so you can just click straight into there

I'm guessing you moved images over from your iPhone to the Pixel? I'd have to imagine the timestamp data is incorrect or something after the transfer because they're all listed in order from newest to oldest for me. If I want something from a specific image folder I just hit the folders button and each folder then lists them just the same. If you look at your image's details in the Photos app are the dates/times for those images all pretty much the same?

Yeah, you're right that that's what's going on. I realized it last night and I found a way to change the timestamp on all those photos. I haven't done it yet but I'm hoping that will solve the biggest part of my problem.

Get GrapheneOS! I would love to have a Pixel8 (I guess) but dont yet. GrapheneOS is the best and most secure Android there is.

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