I hate Google photos because I feel it’s too invasive with that cloud backup that you never really know if a photo is online or on device, so I disabled it in my Google Pixel.
Now Google camera is broken, says it can’t show previews until I enable Google photos again.
Is there any workaround? Tried with many other galleries, but seems it’s hard coded to Google photos…
Yes there is. GCam Photos Preview by the guys over at CalyxOS. You can’t edit photos and you can’t view the videos, but you can preview photos. https://calyxos.org/news/2021/09/30/gcam-photos-preview/
awesome, but without root it can’t be installed as it has the same name of google photos ( com.google.android.apps.photos )
I have it installed on my Pixel running GrapheneOS and it works great. Not sure if you are running a custom ROM or not; I am assuming on stock Android, the phone does not let you uninstall Google Photos? If that is the case then I think you are out of luck as the Google Photos thing is hard coded into GCam.
One more thing I should add. If you can’t find any solutions but are okay with the Google Photos UI, I would recommend you install NetGuard (the FOSS version not the Google Play version) which allows you to apply network firewalls and block internet access for any app that you wish. You could use that for Google Photos but also more applications that don’t exactly need internet access other than harvest data and sell ads.