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Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

theverge.com

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Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#3

Post by crazygringo »

Aren't the photo frame companies able to issue firmware updates? Since the devices are internet-connected, it seems like they ought to be able to. According to the article, the new API "can... access... albums through the new Google Photos Picker API".

Or maybe they don't even need firmware updates, if it's all managed via the photo frame's website.

API's change, and if you make a product that uses an API, you need to be able to change with it.

If Google is somehow making it technically impossible for the photo frames to auto-update from an album, then that would be really annoying. But it doesn't sound like that?

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#6

Post by philips »

warkdarrior wrote: post #5

Good, more security and better controls means third-party apps cannot simply scrape all of my photos.

It cuts both ways. It will probably make it ever harder for users to get a backup of their photos.

I tried to build a product to help people get a physical backup out of Google Photos but their API had so many rate limits and random other errors it would take _days_ or more: https://www.clonecamel.com

Now, I need to also look at how this will work with my personal backup system that uses rclone to an encrypted USB drive.

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#7

Post by CharlesW »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

Aren't the photo frame companies able to issue firmware updates? Since the devices are internet-connected, it seems like they ought to be able to. According to the article, the new API "can... access... albums through the new Google Photos Picker API". Or maybe they don't even need firmware updates, if it's all managed via the photo frame's website. API's change, and if you make a product that uses an API, you need t…

> If Google is somehow making it technically impossible for the photo frames to auto-update from an album…

Per TFA, that's what's happening. "Instead, apps can only access photos or albums through the new Google Photos Picker API, which requires users to manually 'pick' each photo."

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#8

Post by semiquaver »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

Aren't the photo frame companies able to issue firmware updates? Since the devices are internet-connected, it seems like they ought to be able to. According to the article, the new API "can... access... albums through the new Google Photos Picker API". Or maybe they don't even need firmware updates, if it's all managed via the photo frame's website. API's change, and if you make a product that uses an API, you need t…

The picker API limits access to selected photos. It doesn’t look like there is an API for “all current and future photos from an album”, which is the problem (from integrators’ perspective)

Re: Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

#9

Post by rahimnathwani »

The article links to this page:

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-photos-picker-ap...

The utm_source=chatgpt.com is amusing.

  What Will No Longer Work after March 31, 2025
  Accessing albums and media items not uploaded by your app: The Library API will no longer allow access to the elements in a user’s library that were not uploaded by your app. Instead, you can use the Picker API.
It looks like they're creating a specific way for photo frames to be granted access to shared albums, but the linked page doesn't say how a photo frame developer can get access to that:

https://support.google.com/photos/thread/326122731

https://support.google.com/photos/answer/9458709?sjid=162165...

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