Google Photos is built to be the hub for all your pictures, which so often come from vacations and other travel opportunities.
That usually produces a lot of pictures and video, as the convenience of your smartphone means you’re likely to snap and record with reckless abandon. Some new features in Google Photos tries to further organize some of these collections.
The latest feature is designed to add some more personalization to those curated collections, as you can write in captions and add a map that retraces the journey in more detail. The changes generally match up with some hints in the code uncovered earlier during an Android app update.
The changes are a server side switch, which means you don’t need an update from the Play Store. While I haven’t been able to trigger such changes in the Android app yet, they do show up in the desktop version on the web. Such a massive rollout usually takes a little time, so if you don’t see anything yet just hang tight.
The impact on you: The major claim to fame behind Google Photos is that it will automatically organize your images and make them searchable, killing off the need to drag and drop thousands of photos into individual folders. This means relying on Google’s machine learning and image recognition capabilities, which are pretty great, but always run the risk of creeping you out. In practice I’ve found Google Photos a helpful companion, so the new tools are definitely worth exploring.
