It’s a hook for the system’s built-in image picker sheet — as such, it allows the user to browse their entire library, however the the app only gets (one-time) access to the individual piece of content they pick. Nice thing is that the app doesn’t need to ask any photo permissions at all (as far as read access is concerned).
With some exceptions like Messages, which presents a custom picker UI, this API gets dog-fooded by almost all Apple’s stock apps (Safari, Notes, Mail, the “iWork” office suite etc…).
An example of a 3rd party app implementation is MaskerAid by Casey Liss [1]. However, the amount of apps I’ve encountered that use this interface is suspiciously low.
The realistic answer is probably that the sheet looks pretty barebones, and most developers seem to prefer a sleeker, custom-designed integrated gallery view, and/or need write access.
But the paranoid part of me raises the question: why do so many apps insist on continuous access to at least a portion, but preferably the entirety of the user’s photo library?
0 – https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiimagepicke...
