Google change is breaking some digital photo frames

This is exactly why even as a programmer I don't own pretty much any tech crap at all. No cloud connected home automation, photo frames, voice assistant, smart lock, wifi washing machine, nothing. The whole industry is just too brittle and unreliable and your money will evaporate the moment some product manager doesn't want to schedule a bug fix and kills the product instead because it's easier than meeting the promises that you already made. I minimise the number of computers and phones and whatever else to what I'm willing to spend a bunch of time updating and maintaining.

The article links to this page:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.googleblog.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;google-photos-picker-api-launch-and-library-api-updates&#x2F;?utm_source=chatgpt.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.googleblog.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;google-photos-picker-ap...</a><p>The utm_source=chatgpt.com is amusing.<p><pre><code> What Will No Longer Work after March 31, 2025 Accessing albums and media items not uploaded by your app: The Library API will no longer allow access to the elements in a user’s library that were not uploaded by your app. Instead, you can use the Picker API. </code></pre> It looks like they&#x27;re creating a specific way for photo frames to be granted access to shared albums, but the linked page doesn&#x27;t say how a photo frame developer can get access to that:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;thread&#x2F;326122731" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;thread&#x2F;326122731</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;answer&#x2F;9458709?sjid=16216504099681420470-NC#zippy=%2Cshared-albums" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;answer&#x2F;9458709?sjid=162165...</a>

Filed an issue to remove googlephotos from rclone since removeing the library.readonly scope will completely break that. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rclone&#x2F;rclone&#x2F;issues&#x2F;8434">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rclone&#x2F;rclone&#x2F;issues&#x2F;8434</a><p>What a terrible decision by Google.

&gt; While the change is designed to make your photo library more private, it’s also breaking how digital photo frames — such as those made by Aura and Cozyla — automatically update slideshows on their devices.<p>&gt; Last month, Google announced that Google Photos slideshows would soon be available as ambient displays or screensavers on more third-party devices. The feature is currently available on Google Nest displays and Google TVs.<p>Sounds like anti-competitive behavior with privacy as the scape goat, imho. A feature for 3rd parties stops working as Google is rolling out that same feature for their own products?

And again, There is no cloud, only someone else&#x27;s computer.

Aren&#x27;t the photo frame companies able to issue firmware updates? Since the devices are internet-connected, it seems like they ought to be able to. According to the article, the new API &quot;can... access... albums through the new Google Photos Picker API&quot;.<p>Or maybe they don&#x27;t even need firmware updates, if it&#x27;s all managed via the photo frame&#x27;s website.<p>API&#x27;s change, and if you make a product that uses an API, you need to be able to change with it.<p>If Google is somehow making it technically impossible for the photo frames to auto-update from an album, then that would be really annoying. But it doesn&#x27;t sound like that?

Again, they pretend to do the change for your privacy when their only goal is to have control and ensure to use your data as hostage to upsell you their own products and services...

Oh ffs, I just migrated my entire extended family to Google Photos for my elders&#x27; picture frames (it was the only option which didn&#x27;t involve a steeply priced subscription to their service; by the way I was not involved in acquiring these frames in the first place). I&#x27;ll eat my hat if they get a firmware update.

Good, more security and better controls means third-party apps cannot simply scrape all of my photos.

You will own nothing and be happy. Not even your family photos.