Stock camera app crashes when clicking on gallery button with google photos uninstalled

[user0815]

I’m not entirely sure that I got all relevant points, but this is what I did:

1. uninstalled the stock Google Photos app com.google.android.apps.photos because Google tends to try to leak any kind of private data to the internet (inspired by this thread)
2. installed Simple Gallery app from F-Droid
3. started the stock camera app
4. in stock camera app: took some pictures
5. in stock camera app: clicked on the last picture (bottom left symbol)

What happens:
I receive a notification that the app has crashed.

This is the relevant section from the logs:

 1242  9017 I ActivityTaskManager: START u0 {act=com.android.camera.action.REVIEW dat=content://media/external_primary/images/media/554 pkg=com.google.android.apps.photos (has extras)} from uid 10099
--------- beginning of crash
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: Process: com.fp.camera, PID: 26403
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: android.content.ActivityNotFoundException: No Activity found to handle Intent { act=com.android.camera.action.REVIEW dat=content://media/external_primary/images/media/554 pkg=com.google.android.apps.photos (has extras) }
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.Instrumentation.checkStartActivityResult(Instrumentation.java:2073)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.Instrumentation.execStartActivity(Instrumentation.java:1729)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:5320)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:5278)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.Activity.startActivity(Activity.java:5664)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.Activity.startActivity(Activity.java:5617)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at com.android.camera.app.AppController.onThumbnailButtonClick(AppController.java:1560)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at com.android.camera.ui.BottomBar.onClick(BottomBar.java:101)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:7448)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.view.View.performClickInternal(View.java:7425)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.view.View.access$3600(View.java:810)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.view.View$PerformClick.run(View.java:28309)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:938)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:223)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:7715)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(RuntimeInit.java:592)
26403 26403 E AndroidRuntime: 	at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:952)
 1242  9017 W ActivityTaskManager:   Force finishing activity com.fp.camera/com.android.camera.CameraLauncher

What should happen:
No crash, obviously. Open the default gallery app if set, ask if not set. This works fine with OpenCamera.

Additional info:

• Camera app version v2.0.019(01101800-01)
• Build number FP4.FP3S.A.0103.20220221

Can anyone else reproduce this issue?

[user0815]

Note: I know that the code of the stock camera app is behaving incorrectly. It should not invoke com.android.camera.action.REVIEW Intent but Intent.ACTION_VIEW. At least this is what Open Camera does in its openGallery() function, plus a few other stuff.

I intent to contact support, but I want to double-check whether this is a configuration issue on my side.

[hirnsushi]

That’s sadly a known deficiency
At least the FP Camera makes this somewhat clear in it’s manifest.xml:

@hirnsushi

<queries>
        <package android:name="com.google.android.apps.photos"/>
        <package android:name="com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox"/>
    </queries>

I agree that this shouldn’t be the case though

@user0815

I intent to contact support, but I want to double-check whether this is a configuration issue on my side.

Please do, I would be very interested in their reasoning for this dependency!

[TheLastProject]

Ah, Android. Such a complex mess that even as an app dev I have no clue what <queries> does or doesn’t do even after reading the documentation

Anyway, couldn’t Simple Gallery just listen to com.android.camera.action.REVIEW as well? Taking a quick look around, Camera Roll does do that.

I would suggest trying to install Camera Roll, checking if that app responds correctly, and if so, submitting a feature request to Simple Gallery.

[hirnsushi]

@TheLastProject

Anyway, couldn’t Simple Gallery just listen to com.android.camera.action.REVIEW as well? Taking a quick look around, Camera Roll does do that.

Sadly listening to com.android.camera.action.REVIEW doesn’t seem to be enough, FP Camera still crashes when Camera Roll is installed and Google Photos is deactivated.

@TheLastProject

Ah, Android. Such a complex mess that even as an app dev I have no clue what <queries> does or doesn’t do even after reading the documentation

I’m not an Android dev, so to me this is even more foreign
I only know about it because I started writing a script to list all system apps with all extractable information and that was one of the fields I stumbled upon
As far as I can tell this is meant as some kind of privacy feature and Google plans to limit how much installed apps can know about the environment they are in. So definitely not a real dependency as I first thought…

[user0815]

I have sent a support request to Fairphone on 2022-03-29 (or a few days before that) and I haven’t received an answer to it yet. I only received some probably automatically generated “we have received your request” e-mails and another (probably written by a human) “we have seen your other request” answer.

[Gremeorgeu]

Have you heard back, yet? I have the exact same problem, I’ve tried with different gallery apps.
However, I can’t even set any of them as the standard app, I haven’t found this setting - at least not in a “greyed out, not clickable state”…

[user0815]

No, I have not heard back from them.

[yvmuell]

Have a look here

Stock camera app without Google Photos

You can use that I’ve replaced Google Photos on a FP4 running stock FPOS with that solution and it works fine with the FPCamera app. You won’t get a full gallery, just a working preview and most importantly FPCamera won’t crash anymore. So you’ll still have to use some other gallery app to actually view and manage your photos.