Google API change on March 2025

Does this influence the usage of the PLUGIN on my WordPress website?

Yes, it does. I received the email from Google too, today, and I am yet to assess its impact.

However, a cursory glance at it indicated that the Picker API was lacking in several features, such as the ability to pull photos from albums. I know that the email that they sent says it is possible, but the documentation for the API has no such information.

This is the third time that Google is making a huge change in its API – the first was when it changed how to pull photos from PicasaWeb, the second was when it junked the PicasaWeb API altogether replacing it with the current Google Photos Library API, and this is the third.

To be honest, I am unsure if I will be able to make the switch without degrading user experience – as it is, Google has the worst onboarding experience of any platform, and I don’t see their Picker API making things easier.

In the worst case scenario, I will have to stop developing for Google, but it is too early to say conclusively.

lets hope that this can be managed smoothly. Please keep us informed on what you plan to do and what is needed from admin perspective.

thanks for the quick reply

@sayontan I also received the notification from Google, and am being glad to hear your statement about this issue and future.

As promised, I was able to look into this during the year-end holidays.

Unfortunately, as things stand, the news is quite negative. The Picker API is significantly different from the Photos API, and cripples whatever limited functionality the Photos API has. Specifically:

• The Picker API does not allow you to show a listing of your albums.
• For a given album, the Picker API will not allow you to dynamically refresh the list of photos within the album – rather, each time you update the album, you will have to regenerate the gallery using the API.
• There are zero capabilities to apply any type of filtering etc. such as date filters or content filters.

It looks like several developers are unhappy with this (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604241) and have ceased development of their own projects (see https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync/issues/511). Also, this looks like a very explicit push from Google to prevent development of third-party apps – what Photonic provides could likely be interpreted as an implementation of a Google Photos clone – something that is prohibited by their TOS.

I will keep exploring further over the next few days. However, it looks like I will have to shut down the development for the Google Photos portion of Photonic, as the limitations of the new API are just too many. I will provide more updates on this thread.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by Sayontan Sinha.

I am confirming now that Photonic’s support for Google Photos will cease. Here is the full thread with updates.