Photo Picker with READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission on Android 14 still shows all media content – Android

The Problem:

In Android 14, the Photo Picker with READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission still displays all media content instead of only displaying media content that has been granted permission.

The Solutions:

Solution 1: READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission has nothing to do with Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT, Intent.ACTION_PICK_IMAGES or ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia, but with File.listFiles() method.

The documentation is not clear enough and there is a lot of confusion around it. It seems that the READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission has nothing to do with the PhotoPicker or the new photo picker dialog, but with the classic File class.

If your app requests the READ_MEDIA_IMAGES permission and the user confirms, then your app can use the File class to list files in, for example, the DCIM/Camera directory, and see all files of the default Camera app. This is true for Android 14 too.

But if you request READ_MEDIA_IMAGES and READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED, and the user selects four files in DCIM/Camera, then after that the File.listFiles() function will only list those four files, even if you are using the Intent-based photo picker, File.listFiles() is not aware of the new partial access.