On the 9th of January 2023, I read this post on Android Developers Blog which sounds pretty interesting.

Extending the Android SDK

The Modular System Components (MSCs) in Android 10 and higher enable backward compatibility between new functionality and previously-released Android versions.

Android team released a new framework called SDKExtensions which helps to make development more flexible using new APIs that will be available for older Android versions.

Using this framework helps developers integrate new APIs like Photo picker, introduced in Android 13, with older versions too, which ultimately leads to a better user experience and increases developer productivity.

Checking which SDK Extensions are available on a device using adb

adb shell getprop | grep build.version.extensions

Using Photo Picker APIs on older versions with SDKExtensions

Check which SDKExtensions version is required

ACTION_PICK_IMAGE

Install the SDK tools to get started with SDKExtensions

• Using Android Studio, open the SDK Manager, and install theAndroid SDK Platform entry with the corresponding extension level
• In our case, we need API 33 with an Extension level ≥ 2

Configure the project to get started with SDKExtensions

• app’s build.gradle.kts or build.gradle

android {
    compileSdk = 33
    compileSdkExtension = 4
    ...
}

Photo picker APIs are only available for Android ≥13

🙏 Thanks to SDKExtensions because now it’s available all the way back to API 30(Android R/11) 🎉

• Before SDKExtensions we check the availability of PhotoPicker API using the following code 🧑‍💻👩‍💻:
• It returns true if the Android version is ≥13 which restricts the usage of this API only to ≥13 😢

// Older way of checking the availability of PhotoPicker
fun isPhotoPickerAvailable(): Boolean = 
                 Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.TIRAMISU

• Here are some stats 📈 from the Android studio’s new project wizard about the devices that are running Android 11/13

Android 30(11) and Android 33(30) usage stats from new project wizard- Android Studio

• As you can see, SDKExtensions really help us to cover almost 50% of the devices 💚 when it comes to providing the feature for selecting images/videos using Photo picker APIs

We have2options for implementing Photo Picker API

1. Manually check the availability of an API
2. Using ActivityResultContracts

Manual implementation

1. Check if the photo picker is available or not

fun isPhotoPickerAvailable(): Boolean =
    when {
        Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.TIRAMISU -> true

Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.R &&
            SdkExtensions.getExtensionVersion(Build.VERSION_CODES.R) >= 2 -> true

else -> {
            false
        }
    }

2. startActivityForResult and proceed accordingly or Use ActivityResult API which is recommended way

Using ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia/PickMultipleVisualMedia

• It provides a public companion function called isPhotoPickerAvailable()that helps us to check the availability of the Photo picker API
• Here is the code for this method:

As you can see it first check if the SDK version is ≥13if not than it checks the SDKExtension versionswhich helps developers to use it for older devices

@JvmStatic
fun isPhotoPickerAvailable(): Boolean {
    return if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.TIRAMISU) {
        true
    } else if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.R) {
        // getExtension is seen as part of Android Tiramisu only while the SdkExtensions
        // have been added on Android R
        getExtensionVersion(Build.VERSION_CODES.R) >= 2
    } else {
        false
    }
}

• Using this method to check the availability of the PhotoPicker

fun isPhotoPickerAvailable(): Boolean = 
              ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia.isPhotoPickerAvailable()

i̵s̵P̵h̵o̵t̵o̵P̵i̵c̵k̵e̵r̵A̵v̵a̵i̵l̵a̵b̵l̵e̵(̵)̵ — Deprecated🤯

Starting from Activity version 1.7.0-alpha04

• We got a new version of isPhotoPickerAvailable(context:Context)which has the additional check to see if the device has support for the photo picker by checking the running Android version, the SDK extension version or the picker provided by Google Play services

fun isPhotoPickerAvailable(context: Context): Boolean {
    return ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia.isPhotoPickerAvailable(context = context)
} 

Composable to pick an image 🌅

@Composable
fun PhotoPickerResultComposable() {
    val context = LocalContext.current

var result by rememberSaveable { mutableStateOf<Uri?>(null) }

val pickMedia = rememberLauncherForActivityResult(ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia()) { uri ->
        // Callback is invoked after the user selects a media item or closes the
        // photo picker.
        when {
            uri != null -> {
                Log.d(TAG, "PhotoPickerResultComposable:$uri")
                result = uri
            }

else -> {
                Log.d(TAG, "No image 🌅 selected")
            }
        }
    }

Column(
        verticalArrangement = Arrangement.Center,
        horizontalAlignment = Alignment.CenterHorizontally,
    ) {
        OpenPhotoPicker(
            openLauncher = {
                when {
                    ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia.isPhotoPickerAvailable(context = context) -> pickMedia.launch(
                        PickVisualMediaRequest(
                            ActivityResultContracts.PickVisualMedia.ImageOnly,
                        ),
                    )

else -> Toast.makeText(context, "Photo picker not available", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show()
                }
            },
        )

AsyncImage(
            model = result,
            contentDescription = "Image from photo picker",
            contentScale = ContentScale.Crop,
            modifier = Modifier
                .size(200.dp, 200.dp)
                .clip(CircleShape),
        )
    }
}

Sample Code

Demo 👯 💃 🖼🖼 👯 💃