This has been bothering me for quite a while now, and I'm hoping you guys might have some insight.
I believe that around the time Google upgraded to Kit Kat, something became "broken".
At that time, my 3rd party apps (FB, FB messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram) could no longer access my Google photo albums directly.
I just chalked it up to an API change that the 3rd party devs needed to catch up with.
It took a while, but eventually seemed to have been fixed.
However, now that I'm on Lollipop, "Photos" has replaced the old Android "Gallery" app.
The same problem has cropped up again.
I can't access "Albums" via instagram, FB Messenger or WhatsApp.
For example:
In WhatApp,
- When clicking "Attachment -> Gallery", it only shows local folders (physically on the phone).
- When clicking "Attachment -> Gallery", then "3 dots" for more, I am presented with a neutered version of the Photos App with only "All, Highlights and Auto Awesome".
I believe this would be classified as a "pull" case.
However, it seems to be broken for a "push" case as well.
Navigating through the "Photos" app into a Album, clicking "share" -> Instagram,
The phone jumps me to Instagram, but it doesn't do anything past that.
It's almost as if no other apps are allowed to access "Albums".
Do you guys have any idea what's going on?
Has Google banned 3rd party software from accessing albums?
I've tried to Google this issue with any combination of keywords but I can't seem to find it.
Keywords "album", "picasa", "instagram", "whatsapp", "lollipop", "gallery", "3rd party"
The keywords are just too generic and doesn't return anything useful.
Hoping you guys might have some insight?
A workaround, perhaps even a fix?
Thank you in advance for your time.
Related
Another lackluster Windows Mobile solution: Fring, the IM and Internet call app, has a new, free Facebook add-on that seems to have most Facebook functionality, including viewing friends, their photos, their statuses, pokes, adding friends, sending messages, etc. I don't know if chat is enabled, but everything else works OK. But.....
1) it is SLOW AS HELL AND CLUNKY. i don't think it caches anything and with the ever-present spinning hourglass appears to request everything over and over. don't know if i need to enable a setting for caching or not.
2) the interface, while somewhat finger-friendly, needs A LOT of work on the eye-candy front.....but I guess there's only so much you can expect from an add-on.
3) it scrolls right-left to display long statuses or answers on the information pages. I guess that saves space, but it's annoying.
4) it took forever to start up. It would crash when run initially and took several tries to load up my Facebook info.
despite my complaints, it does get the job done and probably has what most people need. if it was faster it wouldn't be that bad.
EDIT: fwiw, just read that AT&T has been having data problems lately, so the slowness of the app might be related to that.
(wasn't sure if this should be in the apps section, or Q&A...sorry if this is the wrong forum)
I recently purchased a Nexus 7 with the hopes of turning it into a photoframe for my grandmother and aunts. They don't have facebook, or G+...etc. So my hope is to create a generic account for them on several services (G+, dropbox, skydrive, flickr, etc.) and then setup the Nexus 7 to auto-download photos from these services and add them to the local gallery (maybe once per hour or day). Then use the gallery, daydream or another app to create a slideshow.
I'm hoping to allow other family members (who are located around the country) to upload photos to these services.
Much of this is flexible, but the end goal would be to allow lots of family members to be able to share photos with my grandmother (and at 102, she's not really in a position to get a social network account and really know how to use it). So ideally, I'd like this to be as "automated" as possible for them.
Are there any apps that may help? If not...other suggestions (on how to get close to my desired outcome) are welcome!
If it's helpful:
This is a Nexus 7 16GB wifi only
They DO have wifi and an "always on" connection
Thanks!
Set up a Google account expressly designed for this, and give everyone who wants to post photos the account login. Then post their pics to an album on G+. Use this account solely for this purpose. Anyone who adds it to their device will have access to the photos via gallery so long as photo sync is turned on for that account.
Thanks Solutions Etcetera! (follow up question at the bottom)
I ended up creating an account dedicated for the device, and while I liked your idea about giving out the login info ...I went another way with it. (mostly to simplify it all for family
I logged into the device account via a browser and then to picasaweb.google.com (if it takes you to Google+ photos, you should get a box that asks if you want to go to the "old albums" or something...do that! I found a setting in there that allows uploads via email.
(you may know the rest of this, but I'm putting it here in case anyone else comes looking.
So I enabled it (via checkbox) which provides an email address of a <long random bunch of numbers>@picasaweb.com.
You can also add a "passphrase" which turns the email address into <long random bunch of numbers>.<passphrase>@picasaweb.com.
Now, any family member can simply send an email to that address with an attached photo (or multiple photos) and they get added to a folder called "Dropbox" (that's google's name...not mine, and not related to the "Dropbox" service).
Then, as long as I have photo sync'ing turned on, on the N7....it seems to work.
My Question:
Anyone know how long the sync interval is?
I can send the account an email...it shows up online, and shows up in the "Gallery" almost instantly, but Daydream seems to ignore changes. I found by restarting the device it sees the new images, but I was hoping for something a bit more "automatic." Stopping just daydream and letting it start again on it's own didn't seem to update with new photos either.
Does anyone have any ideas how to nudge it along? so it more actively finds new photos once they're in the web album?
Thanks!
Without restarting the device, I think you're at the mercy of the media server. Don't really know why it varies so much in updating the media library index, but it is probably designed to minimize impact on battery.
Thanks for all the quick replies, ideas and solutions....er....Solutions.
I had the same issue with the sync interval on daydream. It is not clear to me if you have the photos stored locally. My problem was that there was a .nomedia file in the local photo folders I wanted displayed as part of daydream.
I found this thread while trying to do the same thing. I solved it a little differently. I used dropbox (the actual service, not the folder) to store photos and used dropsync (free) to synchronize the files to local folders. I used daydream to display the synced folders. This also puts all photos locally so my mom can take the tablet with her and have a photo album to share with friends.
hi there.
two days ago i got my new s5. i like it and all but all the image storing and online storage is a little much at first. but since my previous phone was stolen and i lost a couple of hundred of fond memories (pictures) i was determined to store them online this time. i set up a dropbox account that seems to come with the phone and i used picasa or whatever google drive calls my online gallery (never used this before).
it's neat and i figured out how to hide online pictures so it serves as a backup.
NOW TO MY PROBLEM:
since everything is new to me here (had sgs2 before) i played around in the gallery that is now largely different. i seem to have set something to the wrong setting because now it doesn't show ANY PICTURES anymore. not from any folder/album. from one second to the other everything was gone (from the gallery). the pictures are all there, though. i can access them with any other app (es file explorer, google pictures, camera, etc.) but i want my gallery back. it says "no items - after you take, record or upload pictures or videos to dropbox, items will be shown in gallery"
this leads me to suspect that i might have switched my gallery to displaying the contents of my EMPTY dropbox account. i don't want this but i am unable to change it back. besides i have an app for dropbox stuffs so why is this feature even integrated?
settings shows me the following:
accounts:
[g] my gmail account
SNS DATA CONTROL:
sync via wifi only [v]
CLOUD SYNC
dropbox sync
tap to sync content
FILTER
filter by
TAGS
tag buddy
off
face tag [_]
above i can only access "Add Account" which brings me to a menu displaying all my accounts (or some): samsung, google, dropbox, facebook
PLEASE HELP ME!
i did not find any help searching because there seems to be a similar problem with people's media storage malfunctioning. i don't believe that is my problem but i tried resetting the media storage anyways. i am sure it is something that i did to hide my pictures. how do i get them back? i don't plan on using a different gallery app but maybe it is the only solution?
regards
L2
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EDIT:
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i actually just installed quickpic and it shows all my pictures which proves to me even further that nothing is wrong with the pictures but just that my gallery is screwed up. how do i unscrew it?
Clear data for gallery app under settings/applications.
I got a GS5 yesterday, and I love it! But I have one issue. I'm not a fan of the stock messaging app. I tried Evolve, Chomp, Handcent, Go SMS, and Hello SMS. My issue with every single one of these apps is that my Facebook contacts do not show in them. I've gone through all the settings I could think of and couldn't find a solution for this. My 10 google contacts show in there, but almost ALL of my phone numbers come from Facebook. I'm new to Android, so if this is a simple fix, I'm sorry. My facebook contacts work just fine in the stock messaging app, and show up in my phonebook, but not in any third party apps. Halp!
thespacetrace93 said:
I got a GS5 yesterday, and I love it! But I have one issue. I'm not a fan of the stock messaging app. I tried Evolve, Chomp, Handcent, Go SMS, and Hello SMS. My issue with every single one of these apps is that my Facebook contacts do not show in them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A simple Google search suggests that it's a Facebook issue. Facebook allows your phone or a site like sync.me to access your FB contact info. But doesn't allow any third party apps to do so.
The Handcent FAQ explains a workaround to sync your FB stuff with their app -
http://www.handcent.com/dir/help/list##h16
.
Hey all,
I have the unrootable version of the G6, which makes things a bit difficult.
I was hoping there is a way to edit the 'send to' list, without needing root.
Every time I send a picture or something from Chrome, for example, I have to wait for the list of apps to load. It annoys the hell out of me, because all I want in that list is WhatsApp and textra. Instead, I have a plethora of apps I never use, such as; keep, smart-share, drive, messaging, quick-memo, etc... All up, there is 16 apps in the list on my phone, (27 on my wife's G6), along with four contacts that it thinks I want a shortcut to.
Anything I can do?
Have you tried using another browser? The default one or Firefox?
It's not just the browser. I was only using that as an example.
The gallery app and YouTube are the same. Basically, any time I want to share anything, I get a plethora of options I'm not interested in.
For example: