iOS 14 Privacy: Users Can Give Apps Access to Limited Selection of Photos

A new privacy feature in iOS 14 enables users to give an app access to a limited number of photos, instead of having to hand over the keys to their entire photo library.

The new app permissions feature was spotted in the ‌iOS 14‌ beta by Benedict Evans, who shared a couple of screenshots of it in action.

There are lots of little privacy tweaks in the new iOS. You can given an app access just one photo instead of opening up your whole library… pic.twitter.com/k4N78BFaDp — Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) June 24, 2020

When an app requests access to photos on a device, the user can now choose from three options: Select Photos…, Allow Access to All ‌Photos‌, or Don’t Allow.
An iOS privacy awareness pane explains it like so:

Your photos and memories are personal. Apple’s new privacy controls let you decide what photos and videos you share. When an app asks for permission to access your photo library, you have the choice to select specific items or allow access to all photos and videos.

The change is a nice improvement to the current binary option of either denying an app access to your photos or allowing it to get at your entire library of images. It should come in especially handy for when users want to give an app one-off access to a single photo, for example.

Apple has been keen to promote the new privacy features coming in ‌iOS 14‌. Other ‌iOS 14‌ privacy highlights covered at WWDC 2020 include the ability to give an app your approximate location instead of your precise location, App Store privacy lists for all apps, clipboard restrictions, and camera and microphone access attempt notifications.