Play's photo and video permissions policy refused version 150 over this, and
was right to. The policy allows the permission only where a system picker is
"technically insufficient to provide core app functionality", and the app's
real need is the opposite of that:
* every operational photograph opens the camera directly — parcel shots at
pickup, proof of delivery at the door, stop verification. None read the
library, deliberately: a picture chosen from the gallery could have been
taken anywhere at any time and would not be evidence that a parcel was
collected or delivered;
* the one gallery read in the whole app is a rider setting their profile
photograph, once, at sign-up.
That is the textbook "one-time or infrequent" case the policy points at the
Android photo picker for. image_picker 1.1.2 already routes
ImageSource.gallery through that system picker on Android 13+ when the
permission is absent, so the profile picker keeps working and needs no
permission at all.
READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE stays, still capped at maxSdkVersion 32, for devices
older than the photo picker.
Verified absent from the built bundle's merged manifest rather than only from
the source.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EqVJPB9B4QuieZnBAAKgYQ
Thiru-tenext
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