Google Photos could be getting some new features soon including the ability to manually tag photos, timestamp editing, searching for recent uploads and more.The Google Photos team is working on several new and useful features, according to its Product Lead David Leib, who took to Twitter to ask users for feedback. During the course of his discussion, Lieb also hinted at some of the features that were in the works. The discussion with users was first spotted by Android Police, and it looks like the company has a lot of useful additions in mind.
Google Photos is the company’s service that lets users back up with their photos and videos to the cloud service at high-quality resolution. Pixel phone users have the option of backing up their photos at the original resolution. They also get unlimited space on Google Photos for all their photos and videos.
The service is available on the web and as apps on Android and iOS and has proved to be one of the most popular products from Google. But it could still do with some new features as Lieb found it, when he started the discussion on Twitter, which lasted several hours.
The Google Photos’ product lead had initially posted, “Hi Twitter! It’s no-meetings week at
@googlephotos and I’ve got a couple hours free. Tell me what you want to see next from Google Photos! New features, bug fixes, performance improvements, you name it. (No promises but very open minds!)”. His discussion revealed some of the features that could be on the way soon.
One of the most important changes would be that Google Photos will finally let users manually tag their faces on their photos, unlike the current option where users can only remove a wrongly tagged photo. Google Photos right now relies on recognising your face and suggests a tag, and while it is mostly accurate, it does make mistakes. Lieb explained this is definitely on the roadmap, though he did not give a confirmation on when one can expect this feature.
Thanks, definitely on the roadmap.
— David Lieb (@dflieb) July 2, 2019
Google is also working on bringing the option to search for recently uploaded photos to its Android and iOS apps, though this feature already exists on the web. You can just search for Recently Added in the web version of Google Photos, and it will show all the latest uploads. Lieb’s reply indicated that the feature might be coming soon and was likely already available for some users. This would prove useful for users who have uploads from a number of devices.
Coming soon if not available for you already!
— David Lieb (@dflieb) July 3, 2019
It also looks like the ability to edit timestamps will come to Android, though it is available on web and iOS. Lieb said it is coming to Android for sure.
Yes for sure
— David Lieb (@dflieb) July 2, 2019
Google Photos will also let users delete photos from an album, while browsing through this. The option to delete from inside an album is live on web, but not on Android. The Google Photos team is also working on letting users mark an item as favourite, while browsing inside a shared album.
Thanks, team is on that
— David Lieb (@dflieb) July 2, 2019
I think that’s in the works!
— David Lieb (@dflieb) July 3, 2019
Google Photos could let users auto share photos of their pets with their partners in the feature. Partner sharing on Google Photos lets users share their library with their partner automatically. However, users can limit what their share with their partner, when setting up the feature on their Google Photos account.
Sorry that’s what I meant 🙃
— David Lieb (@dflieb) July 3, 2019
Lieb also discussed other features that could be in the works. Some of the user suggestions said that Google should make it easier to remove duplicate photos and videos, show descriptions in slideshows and accurately differentiate between two kinds of cats, and not mark them as dogs.
He also commented that letting users detect and remove duplicate photos would be a great idea as well. On the question of allowing faster deletion of photos with a single confirmation, unlike the current double confirmation, Leib explained that the team has gone and forth on this and right now the thinking is to “help prevent accidental deletes”. But he agreed more savvy users can find the existing method annoying.
Keep in mind that with the new features, Google has not given a timeline on when some of these will roll out to the Photos app.
