Official / recommended media library (MediaStore) + broader mobile native extensions

[fazi-gondal]

Context

Two related issues already exist:

• feature: Support Native Media Gallery Indexing / scanFile API on Android (Serious Python) #6648 — Native Media Gallery Indexing / MediaStore on Android
• feature: Official Native Mobile Extensions Before Flet v1 #6784 — Official Native Mobile Extensions before Flet v1

Both highlight the same underlying need: stable, officially-supported access to common mobile platform APIs from Python/Flet.

Concrete working solution (Media)

I built and published a production extension that solves the MediaStore / Gallery problem:

Package	flet-media-scanner
Source	https://github.com/fazi-gondal/flet-media-scanner
Used in	Vidsaver

What it does today

• Silent save of videos into Movies/<Album> via Android MediaStore
• No broad storage permissions required (Scoped Storage friendly)
• List videos by album
• Delete by content:// URI
• Instant visibility in Gallery / Google Photos
• Pure native Kotlin (no third-party Flutter plugins)

Request

Would the core team be open to either:

1. Reviewing / adopting this (or a cleaned-up version) as an official or recommended Flet extension, or
2. Putting a media-library style package under the flet-dev organisation so other developers have a stable home for it?

I’m happy to:

• Keep maintaining it
• Expand it (images + audio, albums, thumbnails, permissions helpers…)
• Adjust the API / packaging to match Flet conventions
• Transfer ownership if preferred

Broader picture

This is only the first item from the list in #6784. Other high-value candidates that would benefit from the same treatment include contacts, calendar, local authentication, printing, and background tasks.

Having even a small set of officially maintained mobile extensions would make Flet significantly more attractive for production Android/iOS apps.

Happy to discuss scope, API shape, or next steps.

[fazi-gondal]

I wanted to share a follow-up to the earlier discussion around media-library support in Flet.

Since the previous issue, I have continued working on this area and have now built a reusable community package:

flet-media-library

It is a Flet service extension for Android and iOS that provides access to the device media library from Python.

The package currently supports:

• Photos, videos, and Android audio
• Per-media-type permissions
• Android 6–12 and Android 13+ permission models
• Android 14+ selected/limited visual media access
• iOS PhotoKit full/limited access
• Albums and media buckets
• Pagination, filtering, sorting, and date-range queries
• Media metadata
• Fast thumbnails
• Filesystem thumbnail paths to avoid unnecessary Base64 transfer
• Saving images and videos to the public gallery
• Saving audio to the Android Music directory
• Rename and move operations where supported
• Single and batch deletion
• Copy support where the platform allows it
• Live media-library change notifications
• Platform capability detection
• Typed exceptions for permission, platform, argument, and asset errors

The implementation uses photo_manager for the cross-platform media-library functionality, with a custom Android Kotlin implementation for functionality such as audio saving and Android-specific MediaStore operations.

The package also includes a working demo application demonstrating gallery browsing, thumbnails, media playback, camera preview, audio recording, gallery saving, moving, renaming, deletion, and other APIs.

Package/repository:
https://github.com/fazi-gondal/Flet-media-library

I think this is a useful example of how Flet extensions can provide deeper native platform functionality while keeping the application API Python-friendly.

I am sharing it here as a follow-up to the earlier discussion so people interested in media access, gallery integration, downloads, media applications, or native Flet extensions can see the current implementation and try it.

Feedback, suggestions, and use cases are welcome.