Google Photographs remains one of the most natural places to dump all of the photos and movies you’ve taken or saved if you’re a digital hoarder.
It’s a good method to maintain your collection in the cloud, thanks to the amazingly smart searches, some excellent sharing options, and some reasonably robust organized tools.
Of course, there’s no reason it can’t be better, and Google has revealed some information about how it will be.
What’s New?
In the next weeks, there will be some significant improvements, beginning with a revamp of the Library page.
For quick and easy filtering, the interface has been updated to place chips across the top of the screen. You can limit your view to simply albums, shared albums, favorites, or on-device folders with a single swipe.
This will replace the existing design, which has some specialist folders at the top, a carousel row dedicated to on-device photographs, and then a mixed list of ordinary and shared albums.
This view keeps the sorting choices, but based on your sorting selection, it flips between a two-column grid and a list.
What’s More?
Those particular folders have now been relegated to the bottom of the Library tab, but they’ll be joined by a brand new button for importing both physical and digital photographs and movies.
This opens a new page with instructions for transferring images from digital cameras or other cloud-based storage services like Facebook and iCloud, as well as importing photos from local storage and scanning them with your phone or an external digitizer.
The Sharing page is getting its own changes, and oddly, it will now have a design that is quite similar to the now-defunct Library tab. For a long time, the Sharing tab has displayed a single list with all of your shared albums, discussions, and links.
The newly revamped interface divides each of these sorts into its own independent groups, making it easier to browse, maintain, and add to them. Partner sharing is first, followed by shared albums, chats, and then links.
Digging In More Details
The list of upcoming features is being rounded up with screenshots. To start, a new shortcut will be put to the top of the main photo grid to allow you to quickly view all of the maps, software problems, and hilarious autocorrect mishaps you’ve lately taken.
Furthermore, Google is testing certain intelligence features that will emerge when you see a screenshot, similar to the editing recommendations that appear when you view conventional images. You’ll find options for copying text, cropping images, searching using Google Lens, and more.
The revised Sharing tab is anticipated to arrive on Android handsets this week, with iOS devices following shortly after. The new screenshot shortcut and changes to the Library tab don’t have a set release date yet, but they should be available on all devices in the coming weeks.