Can't take photo via Element to send it to a room

[l3u]

Steps to reproduce

I have already reported this for Element at element-hq/element-android#8971, as this is dysfunctional for me in both versions.

When I try to take a photo using Element via the "+" and the camera symbol, nothing happens.

I don't use the stock camera app, but OpenCamera instead. But apparently, there's no way to configure something about this.

I also tried this using Element. Here, I get an error: "Error: Sorry, no external application has been found to complete this action".

Anyway, I would strongly prefer to take a photo or video in-app to send it to a room, like apparently described e.g. in this PR: #6763 – like e.g. Signal does it: There, I can take a photo, do basic editing (rotating, cropping) and send it directly.

Outcome

What did you expect?

Being able to take a photo obviously ;-)

What happened instead?

Nothing

Your phone model

Motorola moto g42

Operating system version

13

Application version and app store

Element X 0.7.5 from Google Play Store

Homeserver

matrix.org

Will you send logs?

Yes

Are you willing to provide a PR?

No

[ShadowRZ]

@l3u See https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/162643544 for what happened, I found this in https://commonsware.com/R/pages/chap-other-001.html#sect-other-image

[l3u]

Well, this bug is five(!) years old … any chance Element X will support taking images in-app?! Ideally like Signal does? This is a really essential feature imo …

[l3u]

Just to have asked this here.

I think the approach Signal has is outstanding. It has a minimalist built-in camera to take photos with screen resolution. You can mirror them, rotate them, crop them, mark something on it and draw something on it. This cover about 95 % of my personal use-cases. Taking an in-app photo that only lives in the chat I send it to, without having to use my camera app and without having to store the photo on the mobile first.

Signal's Android app is open source. Couldn't we simply use this very code? It's already there and it works. That would fix the problem described here, and we would get basic photo editing on top for free. And it would still be possible to share a photo taken with whatever camera app one has, stored on the phone before.

This would definitely be a big usability leap for Element, and another argument to use it and not stick with other messengers.