How to Manage App Photo Access on iPhone iOS 14
Apple has long been a champion of consumer privacy, and it shows. Their latest privacy-enhancing feature on the iPhone allows users to control each individual app’s access to their photo library. In the past, if an app needed to access the photos on your phone to save or edit them, you had to allow that app access to all your photos.
With the release of iOS 14, Apple has given users the ability to continue to share their entire photo library with an app, or, new to iOS 14, users can now choose to select specific photos to share with an app.
When it comes to LucidPix, we love these new photo privacy settings, but they do complicate things a bit for those of us that prefer the more private approach of sharing only selected photos with apps. Read on to find out more about controlling app access to your photos on your iPhone.
Controlling Photo Library Access on the iPhone
There are now two options when it comes to sharing photos with an app on the iPhone: Allow Access to All Photos and Selected Photos.
When you launch LucidPix for the first time and tap the camera icon to make your own 3D photo, you will be shown the following pop up on your iPhone. It’s up to you which option you choose. Not sure which is right for you? We explain each option below.
Allow Access To All Photos
The easiest way to use LucidPix involves giving the app full access to your photos. There are many upsides to this approach, with few downsides. The upsides include:
- Instant access to newly captured photos.
- Faster 3D photo creation. There is no need to select photos twice; once to give access, and once to convert to 3D.
- It’s just easier. We like easy.
What about privacy, you ask? It’s simple: we only need access to your photos so you can select them to convert to 3D. We do not use full library access to look at your photos or otherwise invade your privacy. We only access photos you selected to be converted into 3D.
We recommend that you choose the Allow Access to All Photos option for these reasons.
Select Photos… to Share with LucidPix
Now that the user is in control of their iPhone’s photo library’s privacy in iOS 14, those that have chosen to share only selected photos with an app must take a few more taps to share their newly-captured photos with an app. If you have chosen this limited access, you will be prompted to select new photos every time you start the 3D photo conversion process, as seen in the screenshot below.
In this case, if you want to convert a new photo, you’ll want to tap the Select More Photos… option, which will open your photo library. Simply tap any photo you want to share with LucidPix and then tap Done. Give LucidPix a few seconds to process the change, and your photos will now be ready for 3D conversion in LucidPix.
Changing Photo Access for LucidPix
We’ve received feedback from many users that individually selecting photos to share with LucidPix is too much work. Thankfully, the choices made above are not permanent, and you may change how photos are shared with LucidPix at any time.
If you decide that you want to change how LucidPix accesses your photos, all it takes is a few taps. You can either tap the box (shown below) at the bottom of your screen to open the Settings app and be automatically taken to the LucidPix settings page.
Alternatively, you can open the Settings app, then scroll down until you find LucidPix in your list of installed apps. Tapping on the LucidPix name will open its settings, allowing you to change photo access, camera access, notifications, etc.
Tapping the photos icon will allow you to switch between sharing selected photos with LucidPix, All Photos, or none. We recommend All Photos, but the choice is up to you. If you prefer to only grant access to selected photos, you can edit your selected photos by tapping the Edit Selected Photos text.
We hope this information has helped you better understand the new iPhone’s photo access settings. If you still have questions about accessing your phone’s photos in LucidPix, please feel free to contact us. We’re happy to help!