Photo settings on iPhone's Safari stuck on “Private Access” with iOS 17

It is absolutely NOT fine -it's shady! The choice to allow any access whatsoever to photos, contacts, calendar, location, camera, microphone, and myriad other data sources is mine alone -not Apple's, nor any other entity's. Especially not an app that virtually IS the internet! I set Safari's access to everything on "deny", and grant it TEMPORARY access if necessary. Now it controls it's own access to my photos.

I also discovered 2 non-Apple apps with "Private Access" to my photos which never need access to photos. At least I could delete those. We're stuck with Safari!

By blocking users from denying Safari's access to photos, and offering no other options- "Private Access" might as well say "All Photos, All the Time". We have no idea when Safari is "privately accessing" our photos. What circumstances trigger the access? Is it a nightly maintenance task? What info is being gathered

and/or exposed to websites? I promise, there are hackers right now working to exploit these tunnels through Safari & other apps to our photos.

Hi Saltie Dawg,

Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities! The following article can provide more information about these privacy settings work that can help:

About privacy and Location Services in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS

Hope this helps!

Have a great day.

I FIGURED IT OUT!

Holy crap this mess-up with locking apps out of our own photo access is ridiculous & must have happened during the latest update.

For those of you insisting we are all too dumb to know how to toggle on/off access within our apps need reading comprehension. Many of us said over & over, the toggle access was NOT available in some apps like it was in others, which is the whole problem!

Here’s what I did, you won’t believe how ridiculous this is:

Settings> Screentime > Content & Privacy Restrictions toggle ON > Media & Apple Music toggle to ALLOW> Allow Changes toggle ON > toggle PHOTOS OFF!

ATTENTION🚨Since I updated the ios to 17.1.1, my photos album has private access and it has no access when I want to do something online. If you want to do something to your photos and videos on photos album, but that's it can't, so you can select the photos/videos you want, then SAVE TO FILES. Then voila, you can do anything to those photos/videos that have been copied to the FILES app.

Updating to 17.1.1 also helped me. Safari is no longer on the list and no other apps appear to have this atrocious setting (since it really gave full access and let you select from your entire library). Now to figure out why keyboard shortcuts keep appearing and don’t enable true changes in some instances. Fix one thing, five more things pop up. 🤔

Apple "NEVER" listens!! literlly! Apple sent my iphone 14 plus in for repairs & gave me a iphone XR as a loaner & 3 wks later I pick up my iphone only to be told ot has a new serial number & the motherboard of the phone was replaced!! Phone would not activate on my carrier & apple ignored all calls asking for help!! 3 wks later I finally got the phone to accept the eSIM!! No aapilogies or accountability from Apple!! No explanation as to what cause the phone to need a new motherboard plus apple stated "your phone is passing all test & doesnt need repairing!!" I only had the phone for 78 days!! Apple has the worst customer/tech support!!

Hi! I also have a problem with Private Access. Due to this type of access I cannot to import photos to Procreate or Fresco app and it blocks my work. I am very disappointed

Photos are my private use not meant for platform display. I feel insecure. Where’s the support. Where the none button?

how do i get rid of this brahs

Maybe I didn’t understand your response but your link does not respond to the question mentioned above. Why we can’t control photo access like all the other apps?

I’m on ios 17.2.1 and this hasn’t been fixed.

i specifically want to long press on a photo in safari and save it to my camera roll/photos app. This is incredibly frustrating to have this mechanism broken with no way to back it off and settings in privacy are unchangeable.

Huge negative for you Apple devs. 👎🏼

"I’m getting a bit tired of feeling compelled to check privacy settings on my phone after every upgrade out of fear some privacy setting has been reset or changed without my knowledge."

Same, thank you! After every update -big or small. Despite having all changes disallowed via Screen Time Content & Privacy Restrictions, changes are made to general security & privacy settings, apps given access to photos, contacts, camera, microphone, files, media, local network, location, & cell data; apps are added to those keeping/snycing/backing up files/data in iCloud, & doing background activities; Safari experimental features -excluded from Content & Privacy Restrictions- are added &/or turned on. The most recently added security/privacy risk turned ON by default, is in AirDrop settings: "Start Sharing by Bringing Devices Together" -found by accident when 2 family members comparing phone sizes brought their devices together. Good/bad news is the feature (too easily) works well.

There are a few issues raised, as far as I can tell, one of which is by people like me, who are concerned that Safari appears to have unfettered access to one’s/my entire photo library. The wording suggests the web can see the entire library but can access (what does that mean — presumably upload?) only selected photos. I’m horrified at the thought that Safari can see everything. It certainly reads that way, and I’m clearly not the only commenter who thinks so. If that’s not what it means, then Apple needs to clarify the wording. If it does mean that, then Apple needs to fix the issue ASAP. No work around fixed the issue for me. I had already updated iOS, and I turned iCloud on/off for photos as one commenter suggested, to no avail. Please fix!!

As an aside, I’m getting a bit tired of feeling compelled to check privacy settings on my phone after every upgrade out of fear some privacy setting has been reset or changed without my knowledge.

In reply to vb_ „unrestricted access“

No, that’s not what „Private Access“ means, read the description. It means your photos are kept private FROM Safari, while still allowing you to select photos to upload in a specific instance.

That‘s by the way how Safari always handled it, only now it is explicitly explained and given the name „Private Access“.