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Prevent Smart Forms Photos from Appearing in Your Phone’s Gallery

Learn how to adjust your iOS or Android photo permissions so images captured in Smart Forms don’t get saved to your personal photo gallery

Yesenia Quintana avatar
Written by Yesenia Quintana
Updated over 3 weeks ago

If your crew prefers that photos taken in Smart Forms don’t show up in their personal photo gallery, they can adjust their device permissions—no changes inside Smart Forms are needed.

These quick permission tweaks will stop the operating system from saving Smart Forms images to the system’s Photos or Recents album.


iPhone (iOS 17 / iOS 18)

  1. Open SettingsPrivacy & SecurityPhotos

  2. Tap Workyard

  3. Select None

Optional:

  • If workers still need to upload existing images, select Selected Photos and choose which ones the app can access.

  • Make sure Camera access remains set to While Using the App.


Android (Android 13 and later)

  1. Long-press the Workyard app icon

  2. Tap App infoPermissions

  3. Select Photos & Videos (or Storage / Files & Media, depending on the device)

  4. Choose Don’t allow

For Android 14+, select “Select photos & videos” to allow uploads from the gallery but block saving new captures to shared storage.


Android 12 and Earlier

  1. Go to SettingsAppsWorkyardPermissions

  2. Set Storage / Files & Media to Deny

  3. Ensure Camera is still set to Allow while in use

This will keep images captured in-app from appearing in the Gallery, while still allowing workers to take photos directly from Smart Forms.


Why Some Workers Still See the Extra Image

Permissions vary by user—if someone tapped “OK” when first prompted, the app could write to the photo library. If they tapped “Don’t allow,” it couldn’t.

Also, OS upgrades (like to iOS 17 or Android 13+) may reset permissions or make the prompts more visible, which can lead to different behaviors across devices.

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