[KORraN]

I'm not sure, if it works as advertised. I've been playing with one of the apps and despite selecting "No photos" option, I was still able to upload photos from my gallery. Perhaps some metadata is not shared in this case, but photos definitely were accessible.

[blokey]

There are two APIs in iOS for the photo browser, the API where the app gets access to your photos so it can draw the list view of “all the pictures” is gated with the permission.

The newer API that pops up a system control that lets you select a photo (or more) and only then if you select one, it returns that picture (only) to the application, that API does not need permission, because unless you select a photo, the app does not have access to anything.

[KORraN]

Yes, you are right, thank you. After I have posted my comment, I started reading about PHPickerViewController and it totally makes sense.