dartnative_media_picker

Pick photos and videos two ways: the system picker — PHPickerViewController on iOS, the Android Photo Picker — with no permission prompt to manage, or the photo library itself when your app draws its own picker. iOS and Android.

Two layers, two imports. dartnative_media_picker.dart is the system picker and needs no photo permission. gallery.dart reads the library (albums, assets, thumbnails) and does. Import only the first and your app inherits nothing from the second — this package declares no permission of its own.

Why you'll like it

• The modern system picker — PHPicker (iOS 14+) / PickVisualMedia (Android), so on modern OSes there's no photo-library permission to request.
• Single or multi-select — cap the count, or allow unlimited.
• Images, videos, or both — one call, typed results.

Highlights

• showMediaPicker({type, maxSelection}) → Future<List<MediaFile>>.
• MediaPickerType — images / videos / imagesAndVideos.
• MediaFile — path (copied to a temp dir), name, type ("image" / "video").
• MediaGallery (from gallery.dart) — albums(), assets(), thumbnail(), file(), save(), delete() and permission(), for building your own picker screen.

Install

dependencies:
  dartnative_media_picker: ^1.0.0   # from dartpub.dev

dn pub get

void main() {
  DartNativePluginRegistrant.registerAll();
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

Quick look

import 'package:dartnative_media_picker/dartnative_media_picker.dart';

Pick up to five images or videos:

final files = await showMediaPicker(
  type: MediaPickerType.imagesAndVideos,
  maxSelection: 5,
);

for (final f in files) {
  print('${f.type}: ${f.path}');
}

(Returns an empty list if the user cancels.)

Building your own picker

When the system picker's look is not the one you want — a grid inside your own sheet, your own selection badges — read the library directly. The pixels stay native: thumbnails come back as file paths, so Image.file decodes them at display size and nothing large crosses into Dart.

import 'package:dartnative_media_picker/gallery.dart';

final status = await MediaGallery.permission(request: true);
if (status == GalleryPermission.granted || status == GalleryPermission.limited) {
  final assets = await MediaGallery.assets(limit: 60);          // newest first
  final path = await MediaGallery.thumbnail(assets.first.id);   // a file to show
  final full = await MediaGallery.file(assets.first.id);        // only for what is chosen
}

assets() pages (offset, limit) because a library of forty thousand photos is ordinary and a grid shows a screenful. albums() returns the all-album first, then the rest, each with its count. file() copies the original where your app can read it, pulling it down from iCloud first if that is where it lives — so call it for what the user picked, not for the grid.

GalleryPermission.limited means the user shared some photos instead of the whole library — iOS calls this Selected Photos, and Android 14 works the same way. Treat it as a yes: every call still works, you just see the photos they picked.

Writing works the same way:

final id = await MediaGallery.save('/tmp/edit.jpg', albumName: 'My App');
final gone = await MediaGallery.delete([id]);   // [] if the user declines

save() files the photo under a named album, creating it when missing, and returns the new asset's id. delete() returns the ids that actually went: both platforms put their own confirmation in front of a deletion, and saying no is an answer rather than an error.

Platform setup

iOS

No native setup required for the system picker on iOS 14+ (PHPicker doesn't prompt). The gallery layer needs a photo-library usage string in ios/Runner/Info.plist, and so does the iOS 13 picker fallback (UIImagePickerController). MediaGallery.save() needs the add-only string instead, which is the smaller ask — add just that one if the app only saves:

<key>NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription</key>
<string>Pick photos and videos to use in the app.</string>
<key>NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription</key>
<string>Save photos and videos you create in the app.</string>

Android

No native setup required for the system picker — it uses the system Photo Picker.

The gallery layer needs the read permission in your app's manifest. The plugin declares none of its own, so apps that only pick are never asked for photo access:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_IMAGES" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_VIDEO" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"
    android:maxSdkVersion="32" />

MediaGallery.permission(request: true) then shows the system dialog. Without the manifest entries the gallery calls throw a MediaGalleryException naming what is missing.

MediaGallery.save() needs nothing from API 29 up. Below that it writes the file itself, so add WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE with android:maxSdkVersion="28" if you still support those devices.

Example

The example/ app picks media and shows the results — borrow from it freely.

Credits & license

Adapted from Flutter's image_picker (image_picker_ios / image_picker_android, BSD-3-Clause) and photo_manager (Apache-2.0, by way of a private Presence Network Inc. fork), reworked to run natively on DartNative.

Commercial plugin distributed via dartpub.dev — file issues on the plugin's page.