>Isn’t the image selector an OS component that shows me all my photos without the app seeing them (that is, the app isn’t rendering them)? > If this isn’t the

>Isn’t the image selector an OS component that shows me all my photos without the app seeing them (that is, the app isn’t rendering them)? > If this isn’t the case - why isn’t it? Is there no iOS system level image picker that runs isolated from the app? Or is there, but apps aren’t using it? Yes, you're exactly right. There is a native OS switcher that does exactly what you say. But, there's nothing stopping an App developer from writing their own. Here, they'd just basically be fetching all photos it has access to (i.e., only certain images) and display those there. I haven't installed or used Fb messenger for years, but it sounds right up their alley to create their own image picker. You can shove a bunch of telemetry into your own image picker, but you can't into the native OS one.