As reported by Android Police today, it has been two years since Google stopped syncing Google Drive and Photos, leaving those who depended on that feature with no alternatives but workarounds and time-wasting solutions. That could change quickly though, as a few new commits have been discovered in the Chromium Gerrit that refer to some work being done to bring this functionality back; although not exactly in the same way.
[filesapp] Show only the photo volume in the file picker.
Google Photos volume should only be shown when choosing files in Chrome OS and hidden when browsing or choosing files in ARC.
BUG = 1170198
[filesapp] Add a welcome banner for Android Photos
Show a welcome banner for the Android Photos DocumentsProvider volume. The banner will be displayed up to 3 times unless closed.
BUG = 1171651
The above commitments mention a welcome banner for Android Photos (er, Google Photos?) DocumentsProvider volume, as well as a rule to show only the aforementioned volume when choosing files in Chrome OS. This sounds like the opposite of what the # arc-file-picker-experiment flag now does this, adding the Photos volume within ARC – the sandbox Android framework running in Chrome OS – as seen in the screenshot below.
In addition, the code confirms that users can access Google Photos directly from File Manager – not with a Drive sync like before – as long as the Google Photos Android app is installed on the Chrome OS device. This may finally be the solution Chrome OS users have been waiting for for a long time. We will have to wait and see how this works once implemented, but it has taken a long time and is a source of frustration for many. We will update as we learn more about this new feature.
