1. Background
I have posted some tips recommending Google drive as a host for images and other media:
Animated gifs
https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Tips-Tricks/Animated-gifs/m-p/255103
No server for media, no problem
https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Tips-Tricks/No-server-for-media-no-problem/m-p/695452
Unfortunately, due to "Upcoming changes to third-party cookie requirements in Google Drive" (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/10/upcoming-changes-to-third-party-cookies-in-google-dr...) I'm quite sure that the sort of usage recommended in these posts of mine will no longer work in the future.
2. Testing third-party images
I referred to this video in learning to test to see what will break:
https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd/prepare/test-for-breakage
Put simply, I did the following:
- Turn off permission for third-party cookies in browser
- Make simple html text file to display image, like the following:
<html>
<head>
<title>Image Display</title>
</head>
<body>
<img src=" put the URL you want to test here ">
</body>
</html>โ
- See if the tiny page with your image in it will display in the browser with third-party cookies turned off
As a result of my testing I found the following:
No good
- Still images and animated gifs hosted on Google Drive
OK
3. Things I found (or still find) confusing
- Even in a browser with third-party cookies turned off, you can display an image with the following URL directly in the browser by pasting the URL into the address line:
https://drive.google.com/uc?id=14fpsJkz8jBz6Je_uHcxonnqsCK3RBCK4
But, this won't work inside a simple HTML page with the cookies turned off so I'm pretty sure it's not going to work after February.
- Even with the cookies turned off, everything still works on my apps when I run them in the browser. I'm pretty sure the reason for this is that AppSheet is handling the cookies for the images but that this will come to an end on or not long after February 2.
4. Workarounds
Animated gifs
Hosting animated gifs on Google Drive used to be a workaround that was necessary because, for some reason, gifs hosted on most servers didn't work inside AppSheet's image columns. Fortunately, however, as @Koichi_Tsuji has reported, that issue has been resolved (https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Tips-Tricks/GIF-file-now-animation-is-preserved/m-p/327057). So, if you have a server to host your gifs, you don't need Google Drive anymore. Or, you can use gifs that others have made, such as gifs from Giphy. However, if you try to put gifs directly into AppSheet via an app's uploading interface, it won't work.
Still images
If you are not satisfied with AppSheet's normal image columns and want, for example, to display images via the HTML rich text that is now available in Long text columns, you'll need your own server or some other service on which to host your images. By the way, one advantage of displaying images via HTML inside Long text columns is that they can be made portrait (taller than wide), something that current image columns do not allow.
I'm not sure how stable or secure this is but a workaround for images that are currently in Google Drive is "Embed Google Drive Images": https://www.labnol.org/embed/google/drive/
For some reason, the following conversion of URLs produces images that do not rely on third-party cookies. For example,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14fpsJkz8jBz6Je_uHcxonnqsCK3RBCK4/view?usp=sharing
is converted to
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/drive-viewer/AEYmBYS8A09RxR5Fh-4aboqJfwOJUJDYV32u7hb74Mw3HvDF1d99V...
which passes the third-party test described above. ih3 seems to be how Google Photo images start so it seems that the tool provides a URL associated with Google Photos that is free of third-party cookies.
Postscript
Please see additional workaround for images in a comment of mine.
5. Conclusion
That's my understanding at this point. If errors are identified in comments, I'll correct this post. Please let me know if I'm wrong about something or if there's something important that I've missed.
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