iOS has long had an API for allowing access to individual photos from the system photo picker. Unfortunately many apps eschew this because they prefer having access to all of the user’s photos.

That shouldn't matter. The OS should let you create a fake photo collection which gets shown instead of the real one to apps you don't trust. This idea is obvious and very old. At least in the case of Android contact lists people have been asking for this for as long as I can remember. Why has it still not been implemented on iOS at least? Or has it now been implemented? I've been avoiding both Android and iOS because of stuff like this.

Does anyone want to sell me a phone that runs Debian with the option of running Android or iOS in a VM with appropriate management functions that would make it very hard for an app to misbehave?

> The OS should let you create a fake photo collection which gets shown instead of the real one to apps you don't trust.

Many times yes. And even more important, the contacts!

Now it's you have to "give the app all the contacts" even if you know you want to give it only one or two. And of those one or two, just the number. Not the picture, not the date of birth, not the address.

In short we should be able to pre-select what any app actually sees of of all the databases, records and fields.

It sounds too technical but it could be done properly.

It could be done properly for us (techies), but this would go over poorly for normal people.

"Why do I have to click through all this mess when I just want to post this picture I just took to Facebook?"

"I think I set it right but now Facebook can't see the picture I wanted to post"

et cetera. These granular controls aren't something that regular people want to deal with.

Ideally, the user would be able to force any app that asks for photo access to use the photo picker. Otherwise app developers are gonna ask for full access, because they can.

While I suspect the same thing (why wouldn’t FB access at least the meta data from all photos), I wonder if you have a source or proof for that.

Also, how does that work with GDPR compliance if the UI clearly doesn’t ask for my consent that all photos are somehow accessed and maybe even uploaded?

There is an "add-only" permission, but it seems the app can override and insist on "read/write" permission.