• Google is rolling out various new Android features this month
• These include fake call detection, help with creating outfits, new emoji combinations, and more
• Some of these updates are out now, while others are coming soon

Google announced all sorts of software features at I/O 2026 and the Android Show last month, but now even more upgrades are coming — seven, to be exact, and they're either rolling out immediately or arriving later in June.

Some of these new features require specific phones, but others will work on almost every Android handset, so there should be something for everyone.

Below, we’ve detailed all seven of these new Android features, starting with arguably the biggest of the bunch.

1. Fake call detection

Technology is making it increasingly hard to tell if a call is genuine or a scam, with some scammers even able to spoof numbers in your phone book, so a call might appear to be coming from a friend or family member when it’s actually not.

But Google has now launched a fake call detection tool that can automatically verify whether a call is genuinely coming from your contact’s device or not. If it isn’t, an alert will pop up on your screen so you’ll know to end the call.

Fake call detection is available now on devices running Android 12 or above, but it requires you to use the Phone by Google app, which limits you to Pixels and select non-Pixel devices.

2. Google Photos wardrobe

Google Photos wardrobe is an upcoming feature that makes it easier to keep track of your various clothes and combine them into outfits.

Google Photos will catalog the various clothes you’re wearing in photos, allowing you to filter them by category, such as jewelry or tops, and then combine them into outfits that you can virtually try on, with the app showing you a picture of how you might look in a specific combination.

The rollout of this feature starts next week for devices running Android 10 and above, but initially, it's just for users in the US, India, and Brazil.

3. ‘Find the look’ with Circle to Search

Some Android devices already allow you to circle a whole outfit with Circle to Search and then tap ‘find the look’ to hunt down each individual piece, but now this tool is expanding to more phones, so that every device running Android 14 or above and that has Circle to Search will be able to make use of it.

If your phone falls into that category, you should find that this feature has already arrived.

4. AirDrop support on more devices

AirDrop support through Quick Share finally arrived on some Android phones a little while ago, and now it’s becoming more widely available.

It was already available on some Samsung, Google, Oppo, and Vivo phones, but now it’s rolling out for the Xiaomi 17T Pro, OnePlus 15, and Honor Magic V6, with the Motorola Razr Fold 2026, the Oppo Find X8 series, and the Honor Magic 8 Pro getting it soon.

5. Personal Safety app improvements

The Personal Safety app lets you do things like store and share medical information and automatically contact emergency services, and now some of these tools are being made available to kids under 13.

Soon, they’ll be able to display their medical information and show their emergency contacts on their phone’s lock screen, as well as be able to turn on car crash detection, which will contact emergency services automatically in the event of a crash.

They’ll also be able to do things like schedule Safety Checks, which are simple ways to let an emergency contact know you’re OK. These tools are coming soon globally.

6. Get insights into books

If you use Google Play Books, then you’ll find some handy new features in that too, as an update has started rolling out that lets you recap what you’ve read so far by tapping ‘Catch me up’.

You can also now highlight a passage and ask questions about it for deeper insight into things like themes and characters.

However, these ‘book insights’ will only work with select English titles, so they’re not universally available.

7. New Emoji Kitchen combinations

Emoji Kitchen lets you combine two emojis to create a new one, and now it’s expanding, with new combinations being made available.

We don’t know all of them, but two examples Google gave were combining a bee with a ring, for a ‘blingy bee’, and combining a mouse with a heart, which you can see the result of above.

Google Photos has been available for a decade, and during much of that time, I used the image hosting service to organize and store my photos and videos. Increasingly, I grew concerned that my data wouldn’t be secure. In doing so, I started to look for open-source options.

After much research, I chose Piwigo to replace Google Photos. Have you never heard of Piwogo? You probably aren’t alone. Here’s more about it and why I am growing to love it.

What is Piwigo?

Piwigo is an incredible free and open-source web-based photo gallery software, specially designed for individuals, photographers, and organizations passionate about managing and sharing their cherished digital image collections. Whether you're an amateur capturing moments with friends or a professional photographer showcasing your stunning portfolios, Piwigo caters to your needs with a tailored solution that can be self-hosted or hosted by Piwigo. This flexibility ensures that you maintain complete control over your precious photos and data, making it feel like a personal space just for you.

What truly sets Piwigo apart is its rich set of features designed to enhance your photo management experience. You can effortlessly organize your photos into albums and sub-albums, making navigating through your treasured memories a breeze. The tagging feature allows for easy searching, so you can quickly find that beautiful sunset or that unforgettable family reunion with just a few clicks. Plus, with the ability to customize your gallery's appearance through various themes, you can express your unique style and make your gallery feel like a true reflection of your personality.

But Piwigo doesn’t stop at photos; it embraces a variety of media formats, allowing you to showcase a broader range of content. With its robust user management system, you can invite friends, family, or collaborators to view specific albums while giving them the proper access and permissions to ensure your privacy. And suppose you’re looking to elevate your gallery even further. In that case, Piwigo's extensive plugin architecture allows you to add various functionalities, from watermarking your images to advanced statistics that help you track engagement. Plus, the seamless integration with other services means you can expand your gallery’s horizons and make the most of your digital assets.

Piwigo is available online; you can access your content through iOS and Android-based Piwigo apps. You can upload content through both.

Self- and cloud-hosted options

Piwigo offers two ways to manage your photo library: a self-hosted option and a cloud-hosted service. With the self-hosted Piwigo, you download the free software and install it on your web hosting, which supports PHP and MySQL databases. This gives you complete control over your data and server environment, allowing for extensive customization and the freedom to manage updates and backups yourself. The cost is primarily your web hosting fees, as the Piwigo software is free.

On the other hand, Piwigo's cloud-hosted service provides a fully managed experience. You subscribe to a plan on Piwigo.com, and they handle the installation, updates, backups, and the underlying infrastructure. This option eliminates the technical overhead of managing your server and often includes dedicated support from the Piwigo team. While it comes with a subscription cost, it offers convenience. It ensures your gallery runs on an infrastructure optimized for Piwigo, often with features like automatic backups and updates included in the plan. Both options provide the user with full ownership of the data.

Isn't self-hosting difficult?

When I first started using Piwigo, I tested the company’s fee-based cloud-hosted option. This version allows you to upload your photos to Piwigo’s servers. I went that route when I realized that, as a Hostinger web customer, I could install Piwigo through that account (for no extra cost).

You can install Piwigo through an auto-installer from the Hostinger website. Other hosts provide similar tools that make installing more or less pain-free. If your provider doesn’t, you can install Piwigo manually, which requires uploading a few files via FTP and configuring.

Even with the auto-installer, you must know a little about web hosting. No doubt, you do if you have a hosting plan through Hostinger or another provider. It took me about 30 minutes to get everything set up. Now that Piwigo is installed, I can upload unlimited content for absolutely zero.

Cost for cloud-based solution

Piwigo’s cloud-hosted plans offer a range of options with varying storage capacities to suit different needs. While specific pricing details can fluctuate and depend on your region and current promotions, Piwigo typically offers several tiers that start as low as $25 per month.

These cloud-hosted plans generally include the benefits of a fully managed service, where Piwigo handles the technical aspects such as installation, updates, and backups. You can expect features like albums, sub-albums, tags, metadata import, privacy controls, user management, customizable themes, and the ability to extend functionality through plugins. Some plans might also include advanced features like smart albums, automatic tagging via AI, and automatic file expiration dates.

Is Piwigo worth it?

For individuals and organizations looking for a robust and customizable photo management solution, Piwigo is an excellent choice. Its open-source nature allows users complete control over their data and the flexibility to customize the platform to meet their specific needs using a wide range of themes and plugins. Opting for self-hosting gives you full ownership and can save on subscription fees, but it also means you are responsible for server maintenance.

Alternatively, Piwigo offers a cloud-hosted service that provides a hassle-free experience by managing the technical aspects for a reasonable monthly fee. Whether you prioritize detailed control and long-term cost efficiency with self-hosting or prefer the convenience of managed infrastructure in the cloud, Piwigo offers a feature-rich platform for organizing, sharing, and showcasing your valuable photo collections. This makes it a worthwhile investment for serious photo enthusiasts and professionals alike.

Google is rolling out a pretty cool new AI-powered photo feature through a partnership with Motorola announced earlier today — and it’s one of those ideas that actually feels useful in real life.

'Google Photos Wardrobe' builds on something we’ve seen before with AI assistants: they’re at their best when they’re baked directly into apps and services, rather than sitting off to the side as standalone tools. And in this case, Google is leaning into that idea in a way that could be genuinely handy day to day.

Google is no stranger to this approach, especially across its Pixel lineup. Similar to when it first unveiled Circle to Search with Samsung, Google is rolling out this very handy 'digital closet' feature within photos that can help the fashionistas out there, as well as those who want to learn more about looks.

Essentially, Google Photos will now capture clothing items and accessories that appear in your photos housed within the app. On Motorola’s devices — including the new Razr Fold, Razr, Razr+, and Razr Ultra — Google Photos is the default photo app, and it will automatically start assembling your digital closet from the clothes and accessories it detects in your images.

The result is a digital closet that pulls out the item and presents it as a clean image, while also easily listing the reference images for when that item was found. It could be your favorite pair of sneakers, a button-down shirt you love, or a pair of pants that are your go-tos for a night on the town.

From there, you can mix and match on your screen to get a sense of how they go together. Taking it a step further, you can tap a command to see what it looks like on your… err, well, a digital avatar it will create for you.

This process took around 30 to 45 seconds in a brief hands-on demo. Under the hood, Google’s Nano Banana model generates a digital avatar, applies the selected clothing and accessories, and then renders the final look for you, essentially providing a digital try-on experience for the look you’ve selected. You can save it out, but you can also swap the items if it doesn’t look quite right.

For this demo, the experience wasn’t running on a real personal camera roll but on a repopulated sample library designed to show how the feature works. Even so, it still gave a clear sense of how Google is structuring this as a personal-style system built directly on top of your photos.

Google Photos Wardrobe is launching this summer, first on Google Photos for Android, and that includes the new Razr devices. However, Google is also working to bring it to iOS in the Google Photos app. It doesn’t run on-device, so an internet connection is required as well.

We’ve already seen Google Shopping offer virtual try-ons within Search, but Google Photos Wardrobe feels more cohesive. It builds a personal catalog from your own photos, making it easier to rediscover forgotten pieces in your wardrobe and experiment with new combinations — which, honestly, is part of the fun.

I’m looking forward to spending a bit more time with this when it launches in the coming months. Let me know what you think in the comments down below.

Google Photos has been pushing the company's AI image-editing tools with its Remix feature, offering a set of templates for one-tap transformations of photos into different formats, from clay sculptures to comic books, to 8‑bit video games. They have their charm, but they also tend to start to look the same after a while, and can often go far away from the original photo.

Given how effective Google's Nano Banana and Nano Banana Pro models are at making and editing images with Gemini 3, the Remix feature comes off as a bit bland. You'll end up with results that are not just more interesting, but often more faithful to the original.

If you want some fun alternatives to the same Ghibli-esque image of someone that might be you with heavy squinting, here are some entertaining prompt ideas.

1. Cinematic scenes

Using a photo of myself as a baseline, I started by going for a simple sylistic shift that's still true to the photo, aiming for a movie poster, but sending the following prompt to Nano Banana with all several extra prompt tricks:

“Take this photo and reframe it as a cinematic still from a blockbuster movie poster: dramatic lighting, ultra‑high contrast, cinematic framing, lens flare accents, and bold title text at the bottom matching the mood.”

Instead of simply overlaying a few key elements from the photo in the image, I made the AI employ some classic cinematic principles of lighting, composition, and text style. The idea is to ask the AI to treat your photo like a still frame from an imagined world. The result hangs together with mood and emphasis in ways that preset remixes rarely achieve.

And the specificity gives you control over how it should feel dramatic, not just saying it should be dramatic and hoping for the best.

2. Time capsule

Google Photos Remix choices are pretty generic in terms of the time and place they take place, except arguably the spooky Halloween-style ones. I decided to design a prompt that would set the photo in a very specific temporal context. Embedding the image in a believable past means more than vague sepia vibes, of course, so I requested:

“Turn this image into a historically accurate scene from the 1920s (or your chosen decade): correct clothing styles, period‑specific color grading, era‑appropriate props and background, and realistic film grain.”

The same prompt would work with any era; I just thought the 1920s would be a useful century difference comparison. The city, the suit and hat, the briefcase, and everything else feel more authentic, if still discernible as AI. Again, it's the specifics, which may take a moment or two more than tapping the image basis from Google Photos, but are worth it if you want to do it all.

3. Masterful art

The art style remixes are intriguing, but one-note. If you want to a more direct artistic homage, it's better to ask Nano Banana to study and emulate the characteristic techniques of a renowned artistic school, whether cubism, or, in my case, Dutch Old Masters. Instead of just tapping the vaguely Impressionist image offered as a Remix, I wrote a prompt asking Nano Banana to:

“Reimagine this photo in the style of Dutch Old Masters (though any specific art school or master will do): accurate brushwork, medium texture, lighting, and composition consistent with these artists' work, while preserving the original subject’s identity.”

The practical difference is that a generic filter might make a photo look rough and stylized, while a prompt like this produces an image that feels like it is based on actual art. Nano Banana recognizes visual texture, lighting cues, and atmosphere in your photo and reshapes them with the brush logic of a master. That’s a kind of creative fidelity Google Photos presets can’t match.

4. 8-bit entertainment

Google Photos already offers an 8-bit remix option, but it’s more of a novelty filter than an authentic transformation. I wanted something that actually looks like the photo, but transported to a world of low-definition pixelated graphics. I asked Nano Banana to:

“Reimagine this photo as an 8-bit video game screenshot: low-resolution pixel art, limited color palette matching retro console specs, blocky environment tiles, simple UI overlay with hearts or score, and characters reduced to expressive pixel avatars.”

Nano Banana made me a chunky sprite avatar with repeating tiles, and any emotional nuance gets compressed into three or four exaggerated eyebrow pixels. It’s a playable scene frozen in time with hearts and a score from some imaginary game in a digital flashback, complete with pixellated drama and low-fi flair.

5. Steampunk street portrait

I rounded off my prompt style ideas with a bit of a mix of new ideas and improved elements from Google Photos Remix. It's an alternate world in style and setting, with some throwback design and unreal aesthetic, specifically steampunk. I requested Nano Banana:

“Transform this photo into a richly detailed steampunk setting: brass and copper mechanical elements, Victorian-era clothing with modern twists, steam-powered devices in the background, warm sepia lighting, and stylized gears or clockwork embedded in the environment.”

Nano Banana built out an industrial-fantasy aesthetic beyond my clothes, making a painting appropriate to the Victorian era, albeit in an impossible city with a bizarre suitcase and lots of unnecessary gear. What makes it feel alive isn’t just the props, but the cohesion: Nano Banana made an image that holds together but still looks like me, rather than tossing out the original in favor of making sure it looks like the requested aesthetic.

Google Photos Remix still has its place for when you need something instantly. But it palls in comparison to the far more interesting and complex feats of Nano Banana, especially if you have the right initial suggestions to build off of, like those above.

• A schedule feature for Google Photos backups has been spotted
• At the moment the feature isn't live in the app
• It could give users more say over when backups are able to run

For many users on both Android and iOS, Google Photos will be the app of choice for backing up photos and videos to the cloud, and now it looks as though those users are going to get a bit more control over how backups actually happen.

As spotted by Android Authority, the latest version of Google Photos for Android includes hidden code that points to a revamp for the backup settings page inside the app, to bring it into line with the Expressive UI elements introduced with Android 16.

There's also a new feature mentioned: a Backup schedule. There's no information on what this is or how it might work, but it would seem that you'll be able to choose when your files are synced with the cloud for safekeeping.

Perhaps you'll be able to run backups on a daily or weekly schedule, for example, or perhaps you'll be able to specify certain times when backups don't happen (if you have a limited internet connection, for instance, maybe you would want to pause backups).

Coming soon

The way it works at the moment is that when automatic backups are turned on in Google Photos, your photos and videos are then synced whenever there's an internet connection – though you can set this to only happen on Wi-Fi (not cellular) connections.

That's really all the customization you get – automatic backup is either on or off (you can run backups manually as well). No doubt power users would welcome a few more options for managing when backups are actually running.

While the code for this is visible inside the Google Photos app if you look carefully, it's not currently active. It's not clear when this feature might launch, but if preparations are being put in place, it's likely to be sooner rather than later.

Presumably, Google will give us some more information when this goes live as well. In the meantime, look out for updates to the look of the backup settings page in Google Photos for Android – changes are on the way.

• Google Photos has unveiled a slew of upgrades for its video-editing software, drawing inspiration from the likes of CapCut
• You can now select from a range of video templates to create a hassle-free short-form video, and there's even the option to add music and text
• Google has also announce that its revamped video editor has become the default editing software on Android

Google Photos is going through yet another round of changes, and the photo service has started rolling out big upgrades to its video editing tool, adopting similar features to CapCut – one of our best video editing apps.

Short-form video-editing apps are more popular than ever in an age of ubiquitous TikToks and Instagram Reels, and now Google Photos has decided to tap into this market. The company announced in a blog post that "creating and editing your videos is easier than ever with new features you've been asking for", and says the updates are available for some users now.

With the exception of one new feature, all of the new Google Photos upgrades are available on both Android and iOS devices – so what’s new?

Templates, a new timeline, and more

For starters, Google Photos now finally has templates, making it much faster to create a video featuring different clips – perfect for video-editing novices. Each template comes with its own music, text, and cuts that are synced to the beat of the soundtrack.

All you have to do is select the footage from your Google Photos gallery you want to use in your chosen template, and a TikTok-worthy highlight reel will be created in seconds. This tool is only available on Android at the moment, but iOS users aren’t missing out on other exciting new updates.

The Google Photos video editor itself also gets a major overhaul, which the company says makes it more user-friendly for all, but the biggest upgrade is the new ‘universal timeline’. Similar to features in the likes of CapCut, this new editing view allows you to see all the clips and photos you’ve added to a video in one place, where you can easily trim individual clips and drag to rearrange them – nice and simple.

Search for the perfect soundtrack, and add funky text

You could create the best short-form video ever, but it doesn’t truly come to life until you layer a catchy tune over it, and this is another handy upgrade from Google Photos. Soundtracks are now available in the redesigned video editor, and you can now search Google Photos’ music library to find a song that perfectly matches the content of your highlight reel.

As well as adding music, there’s a new custom text option which you can overlay on your highlight reels. You can choose from an extensive range of fonts, colors, and text backgrounds to make your final video edit pop.

Rounding things off, Google unveiled that its redesigned video editor has now become the default editing software on Android for when you want to edit individual videos. All you have to do is open a video from your gallery and select the Edit button to start, and you even have the option to add text and music to individual videos just like highlight reels.

As mentioned, all of these features are currently rolling out on Android, and most of them on iOS, and if you haven’t got access just yet don’t worry – Google says the new video-editing tools will land soon, so you’ll be able to put your creative skills to good use.

• Google Photos' new AI tool can now make personalized fixes to photos using Gemini’s Nano Banana AI image model
• The AI relies on other photos of you and your friends to realistically open eyes and add smiles to photos
• The update also expands AI editing with simple language and new AI style templates

Google Photos has a very personal new AI image editor that can precisely edit the faces of you and people you know in your photos.

Using Google's Nano Banana model for AI image generation and your private face groups, the app can basically edit the photos using other photos of the same people. You can ask it to open your eyes in a group photo, erase someone’s sunglasses, or fix a forced grimace into a real smile.

It's a notable leap in AI photo editing. well beyond filters and lighting tweaks without straying into wildly inaccurate imaginings of people's faces. And because it uses your own face groups, the automatically sorted clusters in Google Photos that tag people by appearance, the edits are not just generically plausible; they look very real.

The composite fixes are drawn from your photo library’s internal understanding of each person’s appearance, habits, and history.

Google had been promising to bring Nano Banana to Photos for several weeks after incorporating the model into Search and NotebookLM.. The model is fueling many of the Google Photos AI augmentations this week, including the Gemini-powered Ask button to answer any questions you might have about the photos you've taken and possibly forgotten about.

The effect is subtle, but transformative. You don’t need to know anything about image masks, layer blending, or clone-stamp tools. You just tell the app what you want – for example "Make Sarah smile" – and it gets to work. That’s a big deal for casual users who don’t want to learn a complicated image editor or spend 15 minutes retouching a vacation photo from years ago.

AI image enhancement

The personalization doesn’t stop there. In the same update, Google introduced new AI-generated style templates that build on your own gallery. If your account’s full of beach vacations and dog park selfies, you might get a prompt like “make me a cartoon with my dog" or “doodle my name in the sand.” These templates remove the need to rewrite prompts you might want to reuse in favor of a curated set of suggestions tuned to your style and behavior.

Combined with the Ask button, which answers queries and provides insight on your photos individually and in groups, the updates make Google Photos a much more interactive experience. with a degree of personal information and editing options previously impossible without professional tools and hours of editing.

The personalized face editing is definitely a major highlight of Google's recent efforts. That said, personalization means accepting a privacy tradeoff. But, since the edits are powered by face groups that you’ve already approved in your account, the process should remain within your account, without training external models.

Still, the very idea that your own photo history is being used as a reference for AI-edited versions of your face might make some people raise an eyebrow, or ask the app to raise it for them.

Lately, it's been hard to escape the parade of marching, wiggling, and even sensual AI-powered robots, but I'm here to tell you that humanoid AI is a mere distraction – the real power of all those models and generative AI is found in something far more pedestrian that won't cost you $20,000.

I'm talking about Gemini Ask in Google Photos.
(Currently only available in the US.)

I know, that doesn't sound very sexy, but the true potential of AI lies not in how uncomfortable a gyrating robot cam makes you feel, but in AI's innate ability to dig through vast reams of data to find meaning... or, in my case, the exact image I needed in the exact moment I needed it.

I've written before about the impressive power of Google Photos. Its ability to identify photos and triangulate the intersection of specific people and things has long been the stuff of legends, but it also has its limits.

Sometimes you haven't identified a face yet, or you can't specifically name a place or even the exact object. It's in these instances that Google Photos stumbles or fails in its efforts to help you find the right image.

Recently, however, Google, which has been developing and spreading its Gemini models across the Google app universe, added Gemini as an 'Ask' button (it looks like the traditional magnifying glass but with a little Gemini logo glinting along the circular edge).

I haven't used the new Gemini Photos features much, not because I didn't want to, but mostly because I've been looking at recent photos and didn't need to do any deep dives. You never know, though, when AI is going to parachute into your life with a timely little save.

A window into my life

I've been shopping for blinds for my home for far too long. You would think it's a simple task, but then I bet you haven't actually shopped for blinds. The effort takes on the complexity of a geometry exam; so much measurement of depth, width, and length. Then there's the physics part, figuring out what part of your window frame can support your dream sunlight blocker and privacy enhancement system.

We were visiting maybe our seventh or eighth store that sold (and could maybe install) blinds (in this case Home Depot), and chatting with a lovely woman who was trying to understand the intricacies of our windows. We'd zeroed in on the bay window at the back of our house, which comprises three separate windows: one wide one, bookended at 45-degree angles by two smaller ones.

Cellular blinds appeared to be the best solution, but as the salesperson peppered us with questions, we struggled to describe what we wanted. My wife recalled that we've previously had a similar shade system in those windows. What did that look like?

We've been in the house for 30-plus years, and 20 years with this exact bay window. I assumed we might have photos, perhaps even ones with those blinds. But how to find them? Do I just start endlessly scrolling back to a time and hope to stumble on a shot that clearly showed the window with the blinds in place? This poor woman didn't have all day, and I was hoping to get out of the store before people arrived to start buying live Christmas trees.

A beautiful AI mind

To understand the scale of my problem, I currently have almost 172,000 photos in my Google Photos library. I've been adding photos to the system since the days when it was Picasa (Google bought the service), and have moved every photo taken with the various iPhones, along with images captured with my Canon and Sony digital SLRs, into the system. There are even scans of analog photos from the 80s. It's essentially an archive that covers at least the last 30 years.

The problem I hoped to solve was simple, but could have been time-consuming if I took the analog scrolling route or used the older Google Photo search to take various digital shots in the dark.

Instead, I opened Ask in Photos and typed, "Picture of bay window with shades."

It's important to remember that this prompt was applied to my library, and not the vast and random entirety of the internet.

A second later, I had 59 images of my bay window with various shades, including the exact set and configuration I was looking for. I showed it to my wife, who was startled and said, "How did you find that?!" Then I showed it to the saleswoman, who finally understood our intent. Gemini even took the results a step further, offering some commentary about my home: "Your home...features a lovely bay window with shades, often decorated for Christmas..."

My point here is not the window but how this illustrates the true power and potential of AI to find exactly what you need when you need it. No data store is too vast for it, and no prompt is too basic. It's a true answer machine.

So yes, the robots are sexy, and coming to very slowly wash your windows and empty your dishwasher; but for me, I'll take the AI we have now, and helpful answers on my smartphone, every time.

Google Photos is reportedly getting a new AI-powered “Me Meme” feature that will let you insert your own face into popular meme templates, allowing you to become the dog from "This is fine" or the face of a Rickroll.

According to an APK teardown of Google Photos version 7.51.0 spotted by Android Authority, the tool will use your backed-up photos to identify a clear selfie, then automatically slot your face into well-known meme formats, essentially creating an AI-generated version of the popular website, Know Your Meme.

It's a very simple concept: pick a photo, choose a meme, and let AI do the rest. But even if it launches, and it's a polished feature, I can't help but feel that it completely misses the point of making a meme great in the first place.

We need human slop

Memes are iconic, they are one of the core pillars of the internet experience we've all grown to love, and their charm lies in their imperfections.

Creating a meme on Meme Generator works best when you use a low-resolution image and don't bother to center the text properly, or when you take a totally random image and incorporate it into a meme with no effort at all.

Obviously, I've not tried Google Photos' upcoming AI meme generator yet, but if it does launch, I'm skeptical if it will be able to recreate the rough-around-the-edges style that makes a meme a meme.

Often, the best memes are cropped badly, compressed beyond belief, littered with odd fonts, and sometimes misspelled captions. It's that chaos that makes memes funny and relatable, not the perfectly polished, sterile image generation that I suspect we'll get from an AI offering.

A Gemini-powered meme generator might be able to recreate this, but until Google shows me otherwise, I'm not convinced AI can truly capture the magic of a well (badly) put-together meme.

I hate the idea, so why am I intrigued?

It is easy to see the appeal of Google’s idea. Not everyone has the time or skill to edit a meme, and being able to drop your face into a template in seconds will probably delight millions of casual users. But by automating the process, you risk removing the one thing that makes memes so powerful: their human touch.

The best memes go viral not because they are technically perfect but because they capture a feeling, whether it is frustration, absurdity, or shared stupidity, that people instantly recognise, and they connect us because they look like something we could have made ourselves.

When everything is crisp, consistent, and generated by AI, that sense of shared chaos disappears and essentially just becomes another attempt to sterilize the internet.

A meme that is too clean looks suspicious, like it has been run through a marketing department or an app designed to boost engagement. The very reason memes resonate is because they are unpredictable and a bit broken.

That said, people are already making memes with AI, and this feature might just be another light-hearted addition to Google Photos, an app that continues to impress me on a daily basis.

I might be coming at this whole idea in the wrong way, and frankly, I think I'm worried about readily available tools like this because I'm so fond of the way the internet has brought people together through stupid, human-crafted images.

If AI becomes the go-to for meme culture, it's just another creative outlet that will disappear to the power of AI slop, and I find that quite upsetting.

Yes, the internet can be a horrible place, but there are also communities of like-minded people that come together and discuss their hobbies, their work, and sometimes just nonsense. Meme culture is the epitome of the internet, and if it gets diluted by tech companies adding in more features to their AI image generators, then I think everybody loses.

Google's upcoming AI meme generator will make it easier to turn yourself into a meme, but at what cost? The best memes are unapologetically low effort, and I don't believe any artificial intelligence can (willingly) recreate that.

• Three new features could be coming to Google Photos, as spotted by Android Authority
• One of the new features includes a new photo album organizing tool that could save you time when sorting out a large number of images
• Google Photos is also tipped to bring two photo editing features, including a new face retouch effect, and a tool that's popular on Instagram Stories

It appears that Google Photos is going through another stage of evolution, and this time the company is focussing on editing and organization tools.

Despite not knowing when these features are set to go live, we have Android Authority to thank for their intricate teardowns that have allowed for some of the new changes to be enabled, which the outlets has provided visual insights to.

Three new upgrades could be coming to the Google Photos app soon, including a new photo album organizing function. But Google's main focus is on photo-editing tools – one of which adopts a striking resemblance to one of Instagram's most-used functions.

1. Instagram-inspired text options

Just like you can add words to Instagram Stories and Reels in various styles, Google is testing an option that will allow you write text in a selection of new fonts, and add it to photos and videos. Android Authority discovered this in version 7.49 of the Google Photos Android app.

Although the option to add text to media in Google Photos has been around for a while, there are limitations with font styles and colors. This new upgrade gives you more control, and more creative freedom with new text styles and elaborate color choices.

In Android Authority’s teardown, images reveal that the new font styles will have new names including ‘Classic’, ‘Elegant’, ‘Bold’, and ‘Script’ – bearing a resemblance to Instagram’s font titles but with a slight difference.

Its updated menu also introduces a plethora of new color options, meaning you can choose from a wide palette instead of having to choose from the current seven basic hues. At the moment, there’s no automatic color suggestions, or an eyedropper feature to select a color from the image itself, but we’d imagine this will be added in the future.

2. New photo retouching tools

Unsatisfied with the limited editing options in Google Photos? That could change soon, as Google seems to be testing new retouching settings.

The current version of Google Photos gives you a number of basic photo editing effects and filter options, but in a world where smartphone photography is becoming more popular, users want more editing freedom to target specific aspects. This where Google Photos could be introducing a new face retouching effect.

There’s already a similar function in the Camera app, but again, it has a lot of limitations and only works for images taken in selfie and portrait modes. These new editing options haven’t been seen in action just yet, however Android Authority has spotted several text strings that point to the new editing tool, including phrases such as ‘blemish’, ‘teeth’, and ‘dark circles’ – seemingly referring to specific facial retouching settings.

3. An easier way to organize your albums

Grouping your photo library media into individual albums is tedious work, especially if you have thousands of random photos floating around. But fear not, there could be a solution on the way.

In the latest version of Google Photos, Android Authority has managed to enable a new feature that displays a new chip that appears when you view a photo you’ve added to any of your albums. When you tap the chip it will take you to the album the photo is in, but if it’s in more than one album a dropdown menu will appear showing you all the places where you can find the image.

Instead of navigating a photo’s information page to locate its album, the new setting brings that right to the front, making it easier for you to filter between your photo albums. It could save you bags of organizing time for sure.

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• Google just dropped its Nano Banana AI image generator into your search results and notes
• If Google wants the Pixel 10 to beat the iPhone 17, I think it should bring back its best-ever feature
• Google Photos is set to add more AI to help you turn your pictures into videos

• Google’s Nano Banana AI image model is now built into Search via Lens and NotebookLM
• In Search, users can take or upload photos and use AI prompts to transform them
• NotebookLM can leverage Nano Banana to enhance Video Overviews with six creative styles and two summary formats

Google’s newest AI visual model from Gemini 2.5 Flash, known as Nano Banana, is now rolling out inside Google Search and NotebookLM, with Google Photos next on the menu. Google hopes you'll enjoy employing the generative AI model while it's embedded right inside the tools you already use.

In Google Search, Nano Banana shows up via Google Lens and AI Mode. Tap the new 'Create' tab and you’ll be able to point your phone at an object, select an image, or upload a photo and ask the AI to transform it however you like. You can also generate images entirely from scratch using AI Mode and whatever prompt you like.

Meanwhile, in NotebookLM, Nano Banana is working behind the scenes to supercharge the Video Overviews tool that turns your uploaded documents into narrated explainer videos.

Now, those overviews come with six new visual styles: Watercolor, Papercraft, Anime, Whiteboard, Retro Print, and Heritage. You can also switch between two types of videos: a deep-dive 'Explainer' and a much smaller 'Brief'.

You select the documents or notes you want summarized, hit “Video Overview,” and customize the resulting video using dropdown menus or inline text prompts. The new visuals aren’t just decorative, either, they’re also context-aware. Nano Banana pulls illustrations from the content of your documents, meaning the animations relate to what’s being said rather than slapping on stock visuals.

There are a lot of people who might find Nano Banana helpful in both apps whether it's students using NotebookLM to prep for finals or mocking up posters in Lens for a work presentation. It's a bit like a visual version of the autocomplete and Gmail Smart Replies offered by Google already.

Nano Banana split

Google's efforts here are familiar to those looking at how AI tools are appearing in existing software. Microsoft’s Copilot is part of Edge and Office, while OpenAI’s models are used in more and more third-party apps. Adobe is keen to make AI image tools available in Photoshop and beyond, including using Nano Banana.

Google has some advantage just in the quality of Nano Banana, which the company claims has been used to create more than five billion images. It offers a level of consistency that people like, preserving facial details, object layout, and style across images.

Of course, it’s not perfect and sometimes prompts get misinterpreted or mistakes crop up. But for many users, the tradeoff between speed and polish is more than acceptable.

Google promises that this isn't the end of Nano Banana's expansion. Google Photos will have access to the model too, likely allowing for more stylized, editable versions of your existing photo memories.

Unless, of course, you just want to use the new Nano Banana-enabled camera equipment that's now available for sale.

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• Google Photos could be in line for another AI upgrade
• The Photo-to-Video feature may get a full prompt box
• It shows Google's continued commitment to AI features

One of the neat tricks that AI bots are capable of is turning still images into short video clips, and it's something you can already do in Google Photos, to a limited extent. Now it appears the feature will be getting a substantial upgrade.

As spotted by the team at Android Authority, there's hidden code in the latest Google Photos app that suggests there will soon be a full AI text prompt box available for this image-to-video feature – so you can describe exactly what you want to happen.

That gives you a lot more flexibility than the current options, which started rolling out in July to some users: 'subtle movement' and 'I'm feeling lucky'. Those options mostly let the AI decide how the photo should be animated.

The feature continues to be powered by Google's older Veo 2 model. It's not up to the standards of the latest Veo 3 model, but it's still capable of some impressive and fun results – and all you need is a starting image.

The continuing spread of AI

It's another example of the way Google is pushing its AI tools into all of its different apps and services – giving Gemini, Veo and the other models a wider reach than competitors such as ChatGPT can manage at the moment.

That extends to gadgets as well: Google recently introduced a range of new smart home products, including updated Nest cameras and a Google smart speaker arriving next year, and they all come with Gemini on board.

Still, OpenAI continues to expand its offerings with more apps, such as the recently launched Sora 2 video app and attached social network of sorts. Rumors continue that there are ChatGPT-powered hardware devices on the way too.

There's no guarantee that the hidden feature spotted in Google Photos will eventually appear and roll out to everyone, but it seems a likely next step – so keep an eye on the app for any updated options that show up.

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• T-Mobile’s T-Satellite service is now available for more apps
• It lets you use some major apps when connected to a satellite
• T-Mobile has also shuttered its exclusive Google One storage deals

T-Mobile has been offering Starlink connectivity to its customers for a few months now, and the T-Satellite service gives you a way to contact people and connect to the internet when mobile data isn’t available. It’s just been updated to add satellite connectivity to a suite of popular apps, making them more useable when you’re off the grid and away from cell towers.

Posting on its blog, T-Mobile announced that multiple apps will feel the benefits. That includes AllTrails, AccuWeather, CalTopo, Google Maps, onX, T-Life, WhatsApp and X. That expands the number of apps that can tap into satellite service, and those options join several device-native apps – like Apple Music, Google Messages, Pixel Weather and more – that were already compatible.

And improvements haven’t just come on the software side, as T-Mobile has added 17 more phones that will now work with T-Satellite. That includes Apple’s iPhone Air and third-generation iPhone SE, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and more. There’s a full list on T-Mobile’s support page, but you can scroll down to the end of this story for the full list of new models.

Note that when you’re hooked up to a satellite, you’re unlikely to get the full-fat experience that you’re used to with these apps. In most cases, your connection will likely be slower than when you’re on mobile data or Wi-Fi, and certain features might be unavailable.

T-Satellite is included in T-Mobile’s Experience Beyond and Go5G Next plans. If you’re on a different plan or are a customer of a rival cell provider, you can still sign up for $10 a month. You also need to have a smartphone that is capable of connecting to satellites, which includes the iPhone 13 or later, the Samsung Galaxy S21 or later, and the Google Pixel 9a or later (support for the Pixel 9 is “coming soon,” T-Mobile says).

Something gained, something lost

It’s not all good news for T-Mobile customers, though. At the same time as it was expanding its T-Satellite offering, T-Mobile and Google have quietly ditched an exclusive Google One membership tier that included unlimited full-resolution image storage in Google Photos.

This deal allowed T-Mobile customers to access a special Google Photos perk when subscribing to a Google One membership through their cell provider. Ordinarily, paying $9.99 a month would get you 2TB of total storage on Google’s servers.

If you signed up through T-Mobile, however, this would be supplemented with unlimited Google Photos storage – at full resolution, no less. There were also lower tiers that came with additional storage compared to the regular Google One offering.

Sadly, those deals are no longer available to new customers, as of September 30. If you’re a current user of this service, though, you can keep using it, providing you don’t cancel it.

If you’re looking for a new place to store your photos, you still have other options, from the best Google Photos alternatives to the best cloud storage for photos. Make a good choice and your images will be safe and sound, even without T-Mobile’s Google One storage tier.

And if you're interesting in trying that Starlink connectivity from T-Mobile, here's that full list of the new phones that are supported:

• iPhone Air 
• iPhone SE (third-generation)
• moto g 5G 2025
• moto g power 5G 2025
• Samsung Galaxy A36 SE
• Samsung Galaxy A36 5G
• Samsung Galaxy S24
• Samsung Galaxy S24+
• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
• Samsung Galaxy S24 FE
• Samsung Galaxy S25
• Samsung Galaxy S25+
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
• Samsung Galaxy S25 FE
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6
• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6

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It’s almost time for the next generation of Google Pixel phones – this year’s Made by Google event is scheduled for August 20, and we’re expecting full reveals for the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold (the latter of which was teased in a recent video).

The Pixel 10 series is slated to come with a handful of decent upgrades, some of which could push Google's phones ahead of big-name rivals. Specifically, we're expecting 60W fast charging for all models, a telephoto camera for the base Pixel 10, and maybe even an IP68 resistance rating for the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

But just how long will Google's smartphone lead last? With Apple likely to reveal the iPhone 17 series in the first half of September, the Pixel 10 spark could fizzle out quickly. With that said, I have an idea for how the Google Pixel 10 can stay in the conversation once the iPhone 17 series lands – and it involves looking to the past to revive the Google Pixel’s best-ever feature.

Unlimited Photos storage – that’s it, that’s the header

The very first Google Pixel phones, released in 2016, came with unlimited full-resolution Google Photos storage for your photos and videos.

Just picture it: all of your photos and videos backed up, for free, forever. This offer, unusual even for its time, helped to give the then-new Google Pixel series momentum, and remains one of the best bundled features in smartphone history.

Subsequent Google Pixel models then offered the same deal as other Android phones at the time – unlimited photo storage, but compressed down to 16MP for stills and 1080p for videos; still a solid offer considering it came at no monthly cost.

Sadly, Google ended this service in June 2021 and began counting Google Photos libraries against Google Drive storage, which tops out at 15GB unless you pay up for a Google One subscription.

For a bit of perspective, Apple’s iCloud service comes with just 5GB of storage for free, and costs about the same as Google One. So, Google's current offer is still the better of the two (by a long way), but wouldn't it be great if the Pixel 10 took us back in time?

Admittedly, it’s pretty wishful thinking to hope that Google might bring back unlimited photo storage, given that Google One subscriptions are surely a valuable source of revenue for the company. There are also no rumors suggesting that this might happen, so I’m really banking on the power of hope for this one.

But at this point, 10 generations into the Google Pixel series, Google needs to be thinking about ways to gain concrete advantages over the iPhone if it’s to ever be seen as a true competitor. Unlimited Photos storage would make the Google Pixel 10 totally unignorable, even as Apple takes over the airwaves in September and beyond.

What else could Google offer?

But let's get real. If the return of unlimited Photos storage seems very unlikely, what, if any, perks can we expect to see bundled with the Google Pixel 10 series?

Well, last year’s Google Pixel 9 Pro, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold all came with a year’s subscription to Gemini Advanced at no extra cost (normally a part of the Google One AI Pro plan, $19.99 / £18.99 / AU$32.99 monthly).

For one thing, Google should bring this perk to the base model Google Pixel 10 – the fact that the standard Google Pixel 9 didn’t get the same free access to Gemini Advanced was a pain point in our Google Pixel 9 review.

Apple Intelligence is lagging behind the competition, and so Google giving customers advanced Gemini AI at the $799 / £799 / AU$1,399 price point could really turn some heads.

What do you think? Should Google bring back unlimited Photos storage, or is there a better way to one-up the rumored iPhone 17? Let us know in the comments below.

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• Google Photos is adding a feature that turns still images into six-second AI-generated videos
• The platform is also adding a tool called Remix that will remake images into different styles
• All generated content includes visible and invisible watermarks

Google Photos is rolling out new generative AI features that can transform still images into short video clips, briefly bringing anyone in the photo to life and including natural-looking motion. The Photo to Video tool employs Google’s Veo 2 AI video model, the same model deployed on YouTube, Gemini, and other parts of Google’s ecosystem. The feature doesn’t turn your snapshots into full movie trailers; it just creates six-second clips.

Once you see the option to make your images into videos, you just pick the image picture you want to animate, then choose either “Subtle movements” or “I’m feeling lucky” from the buttons below. As you can imagine, the subtle movement choice has the people in the picture move around a little bit. The model is designed to guess what might have happened in that frozen second. The other choice could do anything, perhaps even throw confetti in the air.

The update is rolling out in the U.S. on Android and iOS right now, but there are other AI tools coming later this summer to Google Photos. Most notable is the Remix feature coming in the next few weeks. Remix takes your existing photos and restyles them into looking like comic book panels, anime stills, 3D renderings, or pencil sketch art. It's an ability that Gemini and its many rivals already offer, but now it will be built directly into your photo gallery and won't need you to write a full prompt for it.

All of this comes together in a new section of the app called the Create tab, which will serve as a hub for these tools and any other AI features Google may release in the months ahead. In the near term, it will include the Photo to Video and Remix features alongside the existing collage and highlight video creators. But as Veo gets smarter and Google’s confidence grows, the possibilities could expand into any number of AI enhancements such as extended video clips, voiceovers, or multi-image stories.

The packaging is what is crucial here. This is the first time that photo-to-video generation has been embedded into a mainstream app like Google Photos, which the company claims has more than a billion users.

AI-powered video tools like Sora and Veo have generated headlines for their jaw-dropping realism and deepfake potential. But Google Photos isn’t pitching this update as a creative revolution. It’s presenting it as a memory enhancement. That said, Google doesn't want to accidentally trick anyone about where the new images and videos come from. That's why every AI-generated video or remix will carry a visible label showing that the content was created with AI. They will also each include an invisible SynthID watermark identifying the AI behind its production, the same as the one used by all of Gemini’s image and video generators.

AI photo inspiration

It's unlikely Google will simply drop these new features and move on. After all, the company has already deployed Veo 3, the latest iteration of the text-to-video model, to Gemini and YouTube for higher-quality short videos complete with synced dialogue and background audio. Tools that animate stills today may very well narrate them tomorrow.

This is more of a play for those not constantly trying the latest AI toy, but who do like to share photos and look at pictures taken by others. It's easy to poke fun at the idea of making your selfie move, but that's the sort of feature that attracts a lot of users who want to see just how animated AI can make them.

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• Some Pixel 9 exclusive photo-editing tools could be heading to older phones
• The Auto Frame and Reimagine AI tools may roll out more widely
• Handsets from the Pixel 6 onwards are tipped to get the upgrade

The Google Pixel 9 series launched with a stack of AI photo-editing features that were exclusive to those devices – but now it looks like Google is preparing to push some of these features out to older Pixel handsets.

As spotted by @AssembleDebug and Android Authority, the latest version of the Google Photos app for Android features code that suggests both Auto Frame and Reimagine are going to be made available to the Pixel 6 and newer phones.

Auto Frame lets you make sure the primary subject of your photo is well placed within that photo – that might involve cropping the image, or expanding the background using some AI magic. There's also a similar feature on the best Samsung phones.

As for Reimagine, this lets you tweak parts of your photo using a text prompt and AI image generation. You might want to add a car to a street scene, for example, or a tree to a nature landscape – if you can imagine it, Reimagine in Google Photos can do it.

Pixel exclusives

Google hasn't said anything officially yet, so it's not clear when these new features will reach handsets such as the Google Pixel 8 (assuming Google follows through with this) but the rollout shouldn't be far away.

It makes sense that Google would want to make as many of its AI photo-editing features available to as many people as possible, assuming that their phones have the necessary processing power to run them.

While keeping features exclusive to newer handsets can drive sales, it's not clear how many users have been upgrading to the Pixel 9 just to use the AI image features – though we've been largely impressed by what they're capable of.

In less than a month we'll do it all again, when the Google Pixel 10 series gets its grand unveiling on Wednesday, August 20. Expect a lot more talk about the power of AI, and perhaps some features that are only available on the new Pixel 10.

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Google Photos is one of the cornerstones of the Google experience. It’s the gallery that manages all of your images, gives you access to Google’s AI editing tools, offers powerful backup options, and a whole lot more.

This humble photo management app was pivotal to the launch of the Google Pixel in 2016, with Google promising unlimited storage for the OG model right through to the Pixel 5. That perk ended in 2021 with the launch of the Pixel 6, but Google Photos remains one of the best ways to manage your image collection, whether you’re on Android or iPhone.

Google Photos launched in 2015 and recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, and once you get under the skin, it offers a lot more than you might think. Here are some of the best features you need to be using.

Before we get started, here's a little bit of Google Photos terminology so you know what I’m talking about:

• Memories – this is the carousel at the top of the Photos page that bubbles up images, collections from recently, or from some time ago
• Photos – on the tab at the bottom, this is all the images you have in Google Photos, from the cloud and from your device
• Collections – this is a tab where images are grouped and organized, including albums, screenshots, People and Pets, Places, and more
• Moments – these are automatically generated albums, often based around events, like a holiday

1. Discover the power of Magic Editor

It might sound obvious, but it’s one of the biggest features of Google Photos. Magic Editor was introduced in 2023 on the Pixel 8 and has since rolled out to Google Photos on other devices, including iPhone. You’re limited to 10 saves a month – or you need a Premium Google One plan, which gives you unlimited saves.

Magic Editor gives you access to a range of editing tools that are really powerful. These include background removal and replacement, and specific enhancement for things like the sky or water. It can remove and replace objects using generative AI, and change the framing or style of an image. Some of these tools have been limited to Pixel devices, but that’s set to change in the future.

The best way to experience Magic Editor is to go and play with it yourself. The original UI is a little cramped, but there is going to be an update to Google Photos in the coming months that makes the features universal to all users and changes the interface to make it more logical and easier to use. It really is powerful, so definitely give it a try.

2. Share using a QR code

This recent addition is rolling out to users and builds on Google Photo’s existing sharing experience. If you have a collection of photos – that could be an album you’ve created or one of the Moments that Google automatically creates based around events – then you can share it with a tap.

When the share card pops up from the bottom of the screen, you have a wide range of options – you can create a link, share to platforms like Facebook, or share to someone else as a Google Photos album – but the QR code provides a new level of convenience.

Essentially, it lets you grant anyone around you instant access to those images. Say you’ve been away for a weekend and you’ve taken loads of photos: there’s no need to move them all to the WhatsApp group, just get those who want your pics to scan the QR code.

Or, if anyone misses the QR code, you can also just dump a link into the WhatsApp group, rather than sending all those individual photos.

3. Clean up your faces

One of the best features of Google Photos is that it knows who everyone is. Well, you’ll have to tell it who people are, but once you do, Google Photos will make it easy to search for that person or animal. You can create albums of people or quickly pull up pictures of a specific person, which is always great for sharing embarrassing pictures when the conversation requires it.

But sometimes Google doesn’t quite recognize someone. I’ve found that this occurs with strange angles, items like hats or glasses getting in the way, or when there’s a big age range. Head into Collections > People and pets and you’ll find everyone who is tagged. Tap on a person and you’ll open the complete gallery of that individual.

A pop-up will appear at the bottom of the page, giving you more suggestions for that person. The more you clarify, the better the selections for that individual. This works well with people who appear in a lot of pictures you take, like friends and family.

4. Block your ex from Google Photos memories

It was fantastic, but now it's over. The last thing you need is Google Photos stuffing that person in your face through Memories. Perhaps you’ll cry, perhaps you’ll do something stupid like DM them, perhaps it will just make you angry. You don’t have to delete that person, instead you can manage who you see, when.

Open Google Photos and head into Settings > Preferences > Memories. There you’ll find the option to Show less or Block, depending on how much of that person you don’t want to see.

Alternatively, you can head into People and pets, tap on a person, and open the menu in the top right-hand corner. Then select Hide face from memories.

On a serious note, there are lots of reasons you might want to hide a face – including pets – from Memories, and this is how you’ll be able to do so to avoid those trigger moments.

5. Give bae access to your photos

If you want to go all-in on sharing, you can opt to share your Google Photos with a special person. Gulp.

That’s right, you can grant access so that special person can see your photos without the need to constantly share them. It makes it easy if you’re always doing things together.

There are parameters that you get to put in place, so they don't get access to every photo you’ve ever taken with Google. That includes setting a “from” date, but can also (and more usefully) include photos of particular people.

That means you can share all the photos you take of that person, or all the photos that include your children, which is where this really comes in handy. From Google Photos, tap the “+” at the top of the screen to Create and then tap Share with partner.

Google puts a reminder on the page that the person you are sharing with will be able to see where those pictures were taken.

This isn’t the only option for automatic sharing. Head into People and pets, tap a person or pet to open, and select Share as album. New photos of that person will automatically be added to that album and accessible to whoever you share it with. Again, that’s useful for sharing photos of the kids with wider family.

6. Find your photos in a flash

Searching in Google Photos is powerful and has been for a long time. Just tap on the search option in the app, and you’ll be able to find almost anything. You can search for your car, car brands, or even parts of a car.

You can add additional search terms to narrow things down, like “sausages in December” if you want to find that noteworthy banger you noshed at the Christmas market. Some compound searches get a little dubious as you scroll down the page, but searching in Google Photos makes it hard not to find the photo you’re looking for.

This also integrates into Gemini through Ask Photos. While this feature is currently limited to those in the US, it means you can use Gemini to directly search and find photos on your phone.

If you want to speed up your general searching of Google Photos, double tap on the search icon, and you’ll go straight to the search bar. You can then use voice by tapping the microphone to say what you want to see. This doesn’t work on iOS, however.

7. Find your screenshots

We all take loads of screenshots for so many reasons. So prolific is screenshotting that Google created its own Screenshots app for the Pixel 9. But what if you don’t have a Pixel 9? Then don’t panic, because Google Photos is already sorting out your screenshots for you.

Head into Collections, scroll down the page, and you'll find the option for Screenshots. Hey presto, here are all your screenshots, if you want to find that detail you missed.

Wait, what’s that you say, they aren’t searchable like the Screenshots app on Pixel? Well, they are. Just head into Google Photos’ search function and type what you’re looking for. Boarding pass? Check (remember to select Most recent). Recipes? Check. You get the idea.

8. Control your backups

Google Photos is famed for backing up all your images to the cloud and giving you access to all those photos you’ve taken in the past. It’s worth noting that when you sign into a new Android phone, you’ll be prompted to backup your images using Google Photos – just select the account you want to use.

This is really important, because if you choose the wrong account, you’ll end up with your photos in different places. If you lose access to that account – because it’s a work account, for example – you’ll lose access to those images too.

In Google Photos, head into Photos settings > Backup. Here you’ll be able to confirm which account you are backing up to, and – gulp – how much data Google Photos is currently using. You can also control the backup quality, and if you backup over data and while roaming, or not.

You can also control the folders that get backed up, including whether you want things like screenshots included, as well as whether device folders are backed up. This is how Android users can remove WhatsApp images from their Google Photos backup, if they wish to do so.

9. Jump to the big screen

Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes photos look better on the big screen. Accessing Google Photos in your browser is easy and has a number of advantages, especially if you want to use your images elsewhere, move them into Photoshop for more serious editing, or drop them into desktop apps.

Just head to photos.google.com and off you go. If you’re signed into your Google account, you’ll dive right in. You don’t get all the options that you’ll get in the mobile app – there’s no access to Magic Editor, for example – but there are basic editing options.

Note that if you delete an image while viewing it on the big screen, Google will still remove that image from your account, including all your mobile devices.

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• New editing tools are coming to Android and iOS
• Users will also be able to share photos via QR code

Google Photos has now been with us for 10 years, and Google is marking the occasion by redesigning the app's photo editor, and adding some of the AI-powered trickery that was previously exclusive to the best Pixel phones.

The editor revamp collects together some key features while adding new ones: choose to edit a photo and you'll see a number of suggested enhancements pop up. Tap on someone or something in an image, and even more suggestions appear, such as the option to move the selection somewhere else in the picture, or blur the background behind it.

Tools that have previously been exclusive to the Google Pixel 9 series are now going to be available for everyone. They include Auto Frame for getting suggested crops for a shot, and Reimagine, which works like a mini AI image generator to let you introduce new elements or edit existing ones with text prompts.

Other examples provided by Google include getting suggestions as to how to enhance a particular area of a photo, and changing the look of the sky using the Reimagine tool – so you can turn a cloudy day into a sunny one, if you want to. The redesigned editor reaches Android next month, with iOS following "later this year".

Easier sharing

Away from the redesigned editor, the Google Photos apps are also making it easier to share photos with other people. You'll now be able to do this using a QR code – so you can just pass the code on to other people or post it publicly for anyone to use.

Google has also used the occasion to share some tips and tricks for using its photos app. These aren't new but you might not have been aware of them: like the way you can tap Places on the Collections tab to see your photos spread out across locations, and focus on pictures and videos from particular spots.

Another feature highlighted by Google is the way you can use natural language in searches, whether it's "me in a blue shirt" or "at the beach" – and Google's AI will find what you're looking for. Just tap the Search button down in the lower right corner, then put your query in at the top.

According to Google, since its launch 10 years ago, more than 9 trillion photos and videos have been stored on the service, and more than 1.5 billion people are using it monthly – making 210 edits each month between them. Personally though, I think it's still a shame Google took away unlimited storage for Pixel owners.

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• Add some Ultra HDR magic in Google Photos

• Google Photos is adding an Ultra HDR feature to some Android phones
• This lets you increase photo vibrancy in a few taps
• It can be applied to regular photos even after they’ve been taken

If you’ve taken a bunch of photos but wish they could be jazzed up with a little HDR magic, you’re in luck. That’s because Google has just added the ability to enhance your images with Ultra HDR effects in Google Photos. Better yet, the HDR changes can be applied to regular pictures, even if you’ve already taken and uploaded them.

As noticed by Android Authority, the feature has rolled out to a number of Google Photos users in recent days. It can’t yet be used by everyone, and it’s not clear whether it’s limited to the best Android phones or will soon be available more widely.

Google Photos’ Ultra HDR mode lets you take photos with a wider range of colors than standard pictures. That can boost image vibrancy, but you’ll usually need a device with an HDR display to fully appreciate the effect.

Yet the good thing about Google’s Ultra HDR feature is that it’s backward compatible, so your photos will revert to using standard color ranges on regular Android screens.

It also works the other way, too. Google Photos appears to have added the ability to convert normal photos into HDR equivalents, boosting their saturation and helping them pop much more than they previously did. That means There’s no need to remember to take the pictures in HDR mode in the first place.

Better photos in HDR

Ultra HDR mode had been spotted as far back as September 2024, but it wasn’t fully functional at the time. Now with version 7.24.0.747539053 of the Google Photos app, it looks like it’s beginning to roll out to a range of Android users.

Once it becomes more widely available, you will find the feature in the Adjust section of the Google Photos editor. There, you’ll be able to change the strength of the HDR effect using a slider. It is set to replace the HDR Effect option currently in Google Photos.

You can see a preview of the Ultra HDR effect on GitHub. Make sure you’re viewing it on an HDR-compatible device to be able to observe it properly.

Still, there’s no reliable indication of when the feature might arrive for everyone. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long before it rolls out.

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• As well as making room for more Gemini, Google has been updating its photo and video sharing service
• One of the new features includes Google Photos integration in the Gemini app
• While one of the features is still a rumor, we hope that it will be rolled out soon

It’s a busy and certainly an interesting time for Google at the moment, and it’s not just because Gemini is slowly taking over. While the company is doubling down on Gemini’s integration across the board of its services, it’s taking the time to seriously upgrade other platforms under its broad umbrella - Google Photos being one of them.

Just as Google Messages has been testing some useful upgrades, the company hasn’t forgotten about its photo sharing and storage software, which has also received its fair share of updates and new features, big and small. Two of them are very recent rollouts for Google, and though the third is only a speculation as of now, we’re hoping to see it come to fruition in the near future.

Google Photos gets Gemini integration on Android

In October 2024, Google Photos rolled out ‘Ask Photos,’ an AI search tool powered by Gemini that allows you to use natural language questions to filter through your gallery in the Photos app. With this new integration, Android users will be able to connect it to Google Photos and find photos inside the Gemini app itself.

According to 9to5Google, there are two sides to this new integration, the first allowing you to find images and videos based on the following:

• Your saved faces and relationships in Google Photos
• The location / date a photo / video was taken on
• A description of what’s in a photo
• Conversation with the Gemini app

For example, you can use prompts such as ‘Find my photos of Alex’, ‘Show me recent selfies’, and ‘Show my photos from my most recent trip’. The second part allows you to ask about specific details in your photos and videos, such as ‘What are the top 10 things we saw on our last trip?’ - similar to the Ask Photos function in the Google Photos app.

Dark mode for Google Photos’ web version

Whether you use Google Photos or not, you probably use dark mode settings on other platforms - for me, it’s always turned on when I'm using YouTube or TikTok. For a while, dark mode was exclusive to the Google Photos mobile app, but just a few weeks ago, Google finally brought it to the web version.

It’s a small upgrade for Google Photos, but one that will be very popular with users for sure. You can activate dark mode for Google Photos on the web very easily:

• Head to photos.google.com in your web browser
• Click Settings, and then go into the Appearance section
• From there, you can select your choice from different options, including Light, Dark, or Use Device Default

Google Photos tipped for a big redesign

While this is still speculated, it could be a great design overhaul and one that could make managing your photo library a little smoother.

We first spotted this a few weeks back following a leak shared by Android Authority, which pointed to possible changes we could see in the future, one of which shows the ‘Today’ heading no longer having a checkmark next to it but with what looks like a filter icon instead. Additionally, the leak shows a floating search bar in place of the usual Photos Collections and Search tabs.

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• After rolling it out gradually, dark mode for Google Photos on the web is finally available to all users
• Google made an official announcement, saying that the new feature follows users' feedback
• You can now use the new setting to customize your Google Photos appearance, and it's very simple to do

Almost everyone I know, including myself, uses dark mode on their smartphones, and there’s a multitude of reasons why. The three main ones are simple; it means less eye strain for when you’re endlessly doom-scrolling TikTok at night when you should be sleeping, it saves battery, and because dark mode just packs a more sophisticated appearance than the offensively luminous light mode.

With the case of Google Photos, display rendering options have always been amendable in its mobile version, but its web version has lacked this option leaving many users to navigate their photo galleries through strained eyes. Thankfully, Google has officially announced that dark mode is now available on desktop to all users, and I can already feel the relief of my squinting eyes.

Instead of embedding it discreetly in a software test like it’s been doing with its group chat updates for Google Messages, the company made an official announcement with the statement “Dark mode is now available for Google Photos on web! We've launched this long-awaited new feature thanks to feedback from users like you”.

Bringing dark mode to the desktop version of Google Photos certainly is a big step, and one that many users will appreciate, but it’s a move that we’ve been anticipating since the start of the year. Back in late January Google started advertising a dark mode support for Google Photos on the web following its roll out to Search, YouTube, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Gemini. The initial roll out was staggered, but now it’s accessible to everyone.

How you can activate dark mode for Google Photos on the web

Google has introduced a wide roll out for dark mode support for Photos on the web as a response to user feedback expressing a need for personalized rendering options. Now that it's widely available, it’s very easy to enable:

• Head to photos.google.com in your web browser
• Click Settings, and then go into the Appearance section
• From there, you can select your choice from different options including Light, Dark, or Use Device Default

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• A Google Photos redesign could be on the way
• A survey shows a new design with a focus on search features
• It also makes Memories larger and rounds the edges of your snaps

According to a leak from a recent survey, Google Photos could be about to get a design overhaul, which could make managing your library of snaps a little easier.

Details of a supposed Google survey were shared with Android Authority by a user on Telegram called @Arfus_UwU, who sent a screenshot of two Google Photos layouts. One is the current layout, and the other a redesign, which the user is asked to judge based on how modern or outdated it feels out of 50.

At first glance, the designs seem very similar, with only a couple of minor changes, such as making image borders more round and making the Google Photos Memories action buttons a little larger – the latter of which you’ll either appreciate or hate based on how frequently you use Memories.

However, a few subtler changes could make a world of difference to the Google Photos experience.

Big changes coming?

Firstly, we can see that the Today heading no longer has a checkmark next to it and instead shows what appears to be a filter icon. This means instead of being able to quickly select every photo you took that day you’d be able to trim down the snaps you see based on criteria like where they were taken and who’s in the shot.

At the bottom, we can also see that the Photos Collections and Search tabs have been replaced by a floating search bar and an icon that looks like it leads to your collections pages.

All of these changes look to streamline the process of finding a specific photo in as few taps and swipes as possible.

Whether you love or hate the supposed redesign, remember to take this leak with a pinch of salt. Even if Google is conducting surveys, there’s a chance it won’t copy the survey’s design exactly in its eventual rollout – it’s probably testing for a bunch of different factors when asking for opinions.

Even so, we, for one, love the new look. Memories could be smaller but the easy access search bar and filter options look super useful, especially as Google’s AI gets better at smart search so it can locate the precise picture you’re describing but can’t spot in your camera roll no matter how much you scroll.

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I want to be a better person, especially a better tech person, since, as a sometime "thought leader" in the space, I'm supposed to set an example. Of course, I never do and only take the long, hard, and necessary look in the mirror as the year draws to a close. I make promises to myself about all the ways I'll be better in the new year, stacking up a list of resolutions that are improbable and ultimately unattainable. I hope I at least get credit for considering them.

Perhaps if I list them all for you, I'll feel the shame of not keeping them and do better in 2025.

1. Less time on my phone

I make this promise to myself and those around me every year and stick to it for usually a week. One year, I took a two-week social media break at the end of the year, but, like someone who loses a little weight and then puts more back on, I returned to my phone and social media with even more passion and verve than before.

But the amount of time I spend on my phone is becoming a problem. The other day, TikTok accounted for 48% of my battery usage. That's bad. And my wife is running out of patience. My attempts at multi-tasking – paying attention to her and the phone simultaneously – are failing.

I could try ending this year and starting 2025 with a 20% reduction in phone and social media time, but then I'll be at CES 2025, and you know how that goes. The reality is I need my phone to do my job, but I do not need it for all the other stuff. I'm sort of stuck in a vicious cycle of social media posting and then social media checking. The latter is about seeing the notice and approval of thousands of people I do not know. It's a cycle I long to break.

Look for a similar post next year.

2. Digitzing old media

In my attic are boxes of old photos, stacked like monoliths to a bygone era. Sometimes, I brush the dust off the top of a box or two and start rifling through 35-year-old photos, rediscovering memories I thought were lost. This is quite unlike the experience of conducting a search in Google Photos or even Apple's Photo app, where I can usually find the collection of images I need.

What I realize is that there's a whole section of my life that's digitally undocumented. Apparently, I am not alone – a recent survey by ScanMyPhotos, a service that will, for a price, scan all your old pictures (as well as VHS and films), found that 90% of analog photos are not digitized. That's a lot of decaying and brittle memories that will likely be lost to time in the next decade or so.

Mitch Goldstone, who runs ScanMyPhotos, has been on my case for years, trying to get me to use and review his service. They send the boxes, and then you package up the photos, and everything gets returned along with your digitized images.

I keep promising myself (and Mitch) that I'll do this, and yet I don't, even though I know I will never get the job done myself. Back in the early aughts, I started digitizing my old 8mm video tapes. It was such a massive project that I only got halfway through and have never returned to the project.

Perhaps 2025 is the year I finally take Mitch's advice. Also, I'm selling tickets for people to come to visit my mountain of photo boxes in 2026.

3. Paying attention to the metrics my Apple Watch and Oura rings capture

Thanks to wearing both the Apple Watch Series 10 and Our 3 smart ring almost 24/7, I have more information about the internal workings of my body than ever before. The details should qualify me, if not for doctor status, then at least residency.

The problem is that I ignore all of this data. I couldn't tell you how well I slept or my standing heart rate. Am I stressed? Do I sit too often? Who knows?

I track every workout – mostly core – and each long walk with my wife. I know the details of those workouts but not the trends. Sometimes, Apple Watch congratulates me on seven consecutive days of exercise, and I marvel at the medal animation, but I never dig into the details.

I live an unexamined physical life, and I want that to change. In 2025, I want to start digging into the details of my sleep habits and see if I'm hitting a new peak heart rate during workouts. I want to know the full scale of my walking routines. Like, how many miles am I walking a month? I don't know, but I could. Is my BMI on the right track? After the holidays, I sometimes feel a bit – um – bloated. It's time to track my weight in these apps and see how they sync up with everything else these systems know about the physical me.

I worry that I'll still be too busy for this kind of introspection. Isn't it enough that I work out almost every day? It should be. Still, if I'm going to wear these things, I should be getting more out of them.

I promise by next year, you'll find I'm still working out and know next to nothing about my physical health.

4. Using my iPad for more than just TV watching

I used to draw on the iPad all the time, but my hectic schedule leaves little time for one of my favorite hobbies., You know what I use the iPad for almost all the time? Watching TV. I stream Sling, Peacock, Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and Amazon Prime TV on it all the time. When I'm working, it's the screen I like playing in the background. I'm not watching – much – but I hate working at home without the background chatter of coworkers and appreciate how the hum of a game show dampens the silence.

However, the M4-running iPad Pro 13-inch, for example, is an incredibly powerful system. I want to do more. Can I, for instance, use it in place of my Macbook Air M3? I have the excellent Magic keyboard, and even though I can't run as many app windows as I'd really like, this seems possible.

Also, why not take more notes on the iPad? It can recognize my scribbles and convert them to text. I also could do some serious photo editing on the platform.

At the very least, I'd love to draw on the iPad daily. How do I carve out time to do that in 2025? One answer might be carrying the iPad mini (A17 Pro) with me. It has most of the same capabilities (no right-sized, physical magic keyboard, though). If it and the Apple Pencil Pro are always in my bag, maybe I'll pull them out of the backpack and leave my phone (and that tantalizing TikTok stream) in my pocket.

I can do this one, right? Maybe.

5. Standardizing on a smart home platform

Installing Google's latest Nest Learning Thermostat was a harsh reminder of my smart home's thoroughly confused state. Supporting every platform imaginable in one home is a recipe for disaster or at least dissatisfaction. Forget making automations on scenes when you have a patchwork of intelligent systems.

Considering what I do for a living, it's embarrassing. Even my family is calling me out on it, especially after we stayed at a friend's home, which was entirely standardized on Amazon Alexa, where everything just worked. My wife said little about the situation but offered heavy side-eye.

It's time for me to fix my own smart home and start culling the disparate plugs, lights, and cameras, choose one platform, and begin the upgrade. This worries me a bit, though, because it means I'll probably choose Google Home (I have zero interest in switching out my two Nest Thermostats) and must remove some of our Alexa smart plugs. That seems like a small thing, but our "First Plug" is one of the few smart home devices my wife recognizes by name. "Alexa, " she intones, "turn on First Plug," and our Christmas tree lights spring to life. Imagine her frustration if the one plug she knows by name disappears.

But this is the kind of pain I must endure if I finally want smart home homogeny. And please do not tell me that Matter fixes all this. It has yet to help, and I don't think it will solve many problems in 2025.

The plan is in place...I'm ready to move on with this in 2025, except I have a smart deadbolt that doesn't work with Google Home, and if I swap that out, someone here may kill me.

Other things I think about addressing in 2025 but won't:

• Playing fewer word games (they're stressing me out)
• Shooting and editing RAW photos (I'm losing so much visual information with JPEGs)
• Clearing out my cloud storage (I'm running out of space everywhere)

Look, try not to judge me. At least I'm thinking about all this. What about you? Feel free to email me with your successful tech resolution efforts. I will be chastened and maybe share some in a future post.

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• Google seems to be testing a new Quick Edit feature for Google Photos
• It allows users to apply an enhancement or crop a photo before sharing it
• There's no release timeline for the new feature yet

Google is seemingly testing a new feature for the Google Photos app called Quick Edit, which allows users to apply a last-minute touch-up to images before sharing them with family, friends, and other contacts.

Android Authority reports that a user named Alex – who was using version 7.10.0 of the Google Photos app on a Google Pixel 6 Pro handset – noticed a new screen on their Google Photos app, suggesting Google may be A/B testing the new feature with a limited number of users. We don’t know how these users would have been selected.

Though developed by Google and included with Android, Google Photos is available on a wide range of devices – so this new feature could prove useful whether you're rocking a Google Pixel 9, Samsung Galaxy S24, or iPhone 16.

At the moment, it seems the screen only appears when selecting a single image. However, those hoping for deep image editing before sending their snaps may want to defer to another app, as the Quick Edit screen seems to only offer, well, very quick and light-touch edits.

According to screenshots shared by the Android Authority tipster (above), users are only able to use Quick Edit to apply a one-and-done enhancement to the image or apply a crop to the photo. This appears to be the same enhancement available in the app’s existing Edit screen.

Limited... but better than nothing

The editing options coming to Google Photos might seem a tad limited, but I’m personally happy to see this feature being trialed, given the amount of time I spend cropping screenshots and document scans to send to others.

However, it would be nice to at least see basic brightness, contrast, and saturation controls added to the Quick Edit screen by release, as I find one-shot ‘enhancements’ can have unpredictable effects on colors and lighting.

There’s a balance to be struck here, as speed is the name of the game, but I can’t see myself needing to enhance screenshots, document scans, or purely informational images like photos of signs.

And as for pics of friends and family, I’m unlikely to just throw on a blanket enhancement filter and call it a day – though if the touch-ups are subtle enough, I can see this being useful for people who are less bothered or less experienced with editing photos on a smartphone.

In any case, this is a feature I could see myself using, and I’m a fan of anything that gives users more options to use their device how they like. Google hasn’t issued a release date for this new feature yet, so be sure to keep up with our Android coverage for the latest updates.

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• Google Photos is rolling out a new Recap feature today
• Recap videos give you a Spotify Wrapped-style summary of your year
• The feature includes highlights and stats like your longest photo streak

If you're a big Google Photos fan, the service knows a lot about your life – and from today it's crunching all of that data together to make a new Spotify Wrapped-style highlights video of your year called Recap.

Rolling out from today in the Google Photos app, Recap goes a bit further than the Memories feature it's based on. There are the usual photo and video highlights, but like Wrapped you get stats based on your photos – like your longest photo streak and the top colors you photographed in 2024.

Recap can also reveal who you smiled the most with this year, but to power all of this you need to have Google Photos' 'Face Groups' setting turned on. To check that, inside the app go to your Account profile photo or initials in the top-right, then Settings > Privacy > Face Groups.

The Recap feature takes the form of a short video that sits in your Memories carousel and you'll get a notification in the Google Photos app when yours is ready. Google says it'll sit in the carousel throughout December so it's handy for sharing over the holidays, but you can also share it to social media from the app.

Google also says that "select users" in the US can also opt in to receive a version of their Recap video with personalized captions that are generated by Google Gemini. To do that, you'll need to head into the app's Settings and opt into using Gemini features.

How much do you want Google Photos to know?

New Google Photos features like Recap and 'Ask Photos' could divide opinion among its users. For some, they'll be fun, time-saving tools that save them from what were once huge photo book projects. But others could find its all-knowing analysis of their photo libraries a little creepy and invasive.

Recap goes a step beyond being a highlights reel with stats like the number of smiles you captured, who you smiled with the most and your favorite colors of 2024 (above).

That's all pretty innocent, but there's also a danger that those who haven't delved into Google Photos Memories settings like 'hide a face' could get a Recap video that treads on sensitive ground. A Google spokesperson told us: "Not all memories are worth revisiting, so we use filters and do our best to avoid resurfacing upsetting memories. However, there may be times where we don’t get it right."

"That’s why Google Photos includes controls to hide photos of certain people or time periods within Memories. Hidden people and dates will not appear in your Recap," the spokesperson reassured us.

Gemini-powered features like 'Ask Photos' (and the personalized Recap captions available to "select users" in the US) are also opt-in, so Google recognizes there is a sensitivity to its most powerful AI features being applied to Google Photos.

The tech giant's privacy hub for Google Photos says that your personal data in Photos is "never used for ads" and that your 'Ask Photos' responses "aren't reviewed by humans", but with cloud photo libraries becoming increasingly smart it's worth deciding how much you want the services to know about your life.

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We’ve all been using photo filters and related tools for years to make our faces, food, and fall decor look their best. AI tools arguably manipulate photos in fundamental ways well beyond better lighting and removing red eyes.

Google Photos has several generative AI features that can alter an image, but Google will now mark on a photo that you’ve used those tools in the name of transparency.

Starting next week, any photo edited with Google’s Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, or Zoom Enhance tools will show a disclaimer indicating that fact within the Google Photos app. The idea is to balance out how easy it is to use AI editing tools in ways that are hard to spot by looking. Google hopes the update will reduce any confusion about image authenticity, whether innocent or done with malicious intent.

Google already marks a photo’s metadata if it’s been edited with generative AI using technical standards created by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). The metadata is only seen when examining the data behind a photo, relevant only for investigative purposes and record-keeping. But the update digs out that bit of metadata to show along with an image’s more mundane details, such as its file name and location.

AI image mania

Google isn’t singling out its AI tools for the transparency initiative either. Any blended image will have a disclaimer. For instance, the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 smartphones have two photo features: Best Take and Add Me. Best Take will meld together several photos taken together of a group of people into one image to show everyone at their most photogenic, while Add Me can make it look like someone is in a picture who wasn’t there. As these are in the realm of synthetic image creation, Google decided to give them a tag indicating they are built from multiple pictures, though not with AI tools.

You probably won’t notice the change unless you decide to check a picture that seems a little too amazing or if you want to check everything you see out of well-founded caution. However, professionals will probably appreciate Google’s move since they don’t want to undermine their credibility in a dispute over whether they used AI. Trusting a photograph isn’t always enough when AI tools are good enough to trick the eye. A tag or lack thereof by Google might boost trust in a photo.

Google’s move points to what may be the future of photography and digital media as AI tools grow more common. Of course, doing so is also a marketing move. It’s a very minor change to Google Photos in many ways, but proclaiming it helps Google look like it's being responsible about AI while actually doing so.

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Google Photos is already a powerful, searchable archive of personal memories – and now Google is rolling out a Gemini-powered upgrade that could see it fully replace your brain for recalling specific life events.

As spotted by 9to5Google, Google has started rewarding those who signed up for its new 'Ask Photos' waitlist with an early rollout of the feature in the US. The tool, which lets you search you Google Photos library with natural language questions like "where did we camp last time we went to Yosemite?", is now appearing for many in the Google Photos app.

The rollout confirms that 'Ask Photos' will effectively replace the current 'Search' tab in the app's bottom bar. Once you've agreed to Google's data requests (more on that later), it'll work across Google Photos on all platforms tied to your account. You can apparently still use the old search, but only if you asked the question in Ask Photos first.

The feature is mainly focused on answering questions about the people in your life, but Google says it'll also be a helpful vacation assistant. One of its example questions during the launch back at Google IO 2024 was "what did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?" and it'll presumably also be able to recall hotel names, license plates and more – in short, anything that you've photographed and backed up.

Unfortunately, 'Ask Photos' is currently a US-only feature, but we've asked Google for an update on a potential global rollout and we'll update this story if we hear back.

A frighteningly knowledgeable sidekick

Google Photos has morphed from being a fairly basic photo organizer to an AI-powered memory bank – and the new 'Ask Photos' feature is its biggest search upgrade for some time. For some, the new feature will be a lifesaver, but others could understandably balk as its slightly invasive powers.

Google says you don't need to worry about the answers from 'Ask Photos' being reviewed by humans. That said, it says that in order to improve the feature "queries may be reviewed by humans, but only after being disconnected from your Google Account to protect your privacy."

There's no doubt that search is the main appeal of Google Photos, and it'll be interesting to see how 'Ask Photos' compares to the on-device search available in alternative apps like Apple Photos. But if you'd prefer to opt out of the new age of AI-powered search, you can also check out the best Google Photos alternatives like iDrive.

You can already search your snaps in Google Photos using natural language questions like "kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains" or "Emma painting in the backyard", thanks to an update that rolled out last month. But 'Ask Photos' takes image library analysis to a new level – and you'll need to decide soon whether or not that's something you want to embrace or nervously back away from. 

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If you're a Google Photos user, you'll know the app has a Memories feature that brings up older pictures and videos from your collections, reminding you of trips and other special occasions – and it seems that Memories is in line to get an AI upgrade in the near future.

As spotted by Android Authority, the latest version of Google Photos on Android comes with hidden code mentioning Gemini, the Google AI chatbot. The code isn't currently active, but the Android Authority team was able to enable it, to a limited extent.

The key new option the code enables is for "Gemini-powered memories", which will apparently turn on "recap memories narrated by Gemini". Currently, slideshows in Memories are accompanied by a music soundtrack.

Presumably, this means the AI will analyze what's in your photos, and prepare a running commentary for you – but it remains to be seen whether this will enhance the experience of looking back through time, or just feel weird.

Tell me a story, AI

There's no doubt that Google's AI tools are getting more advanced: the NotebookLM program, for example, can create incredibly realistic, podcast-style audio 'discussions' from your documents and notes – and on the whole they sound fantastic.

It's possible that Gemini recaps in Google Photos will be able to sound natural and casual enough not to be jarring, but it's not as if the AI really knows what the pictures and videos show. It'll just be relying on image recognition, location tags, and some generative AI.

To really be useful, Google Photos may have to give Gemini access to lots of information about your library, including the names of the people in your images. Still, we shouldn't judge the feature before it's actually gone live – we'll wait and see how good it is.

According to this hidden code, Gemini narration will at least be optional, so you'll be able to turn it off if you don't like it. It's not clear when the feature might be enabled, but considering it's in the app code already, it shouldn't be too far away.

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If you struggle remember people, places or even the specific meal you ate on holiday, then fear not – Google Photos is getting two big upgrades that mean it will increasingly act like your AI-powered photographic memory.

The first is a big update to the search function in Google Photos. Google says that, starting from today (September 5), you'll be able to search your photos in the iOS or Android app using more everyday language, rather than specific keywords.

A few of the examples of the types of phrasing you can use include "Alice and me laughing", "kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains" or "Emma painting in the backyard". In other words, your searches can now be much more conversational and descriptive.

To help you refine your searches further, you'll also be able filter and sort your searches by date or relevance. Google says this new search experience is rolling out now for English speakers, but will expand to more languages "over the coming weeks".

But the real glimpse of where Google Photos – and our memories – are headed is the app's the 'Ask Photos' feature. This was first announced at Google IO 2024, but Google has just opened up the waitlist for those in the US – and you can sign up for it on the official 'Ask Photos' page.

The Gemini-powered feature (which is currently free doesn't need a subscription) seemingly understands your photographic history on a much deeper level, letting you effectively treat it as your photographic memory with even more conversational, natural language searches.

For example, you can apparently ask it questions "What did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?" or "Where did we camp last time we went to Yosemite?", and it'll rifle through your snaps to hunt down the answer. Clever, and potentially slightly creepy, stuff.

The ultimate argument settler?

There are clearly some privacy concerns around a feature as powerful as 'Ask Photos' – in fact, it reminds us a little of the Black Mirror episode 'The Entire History of You', where tech records the characters' audiovisual senses and allows them to relive memories – with mixed results.

Of course, Google isn't proposing recording your every move, just using AI-powered search to understand your life on a deeper level – and only through the photos you share with it. 

Google says that it's taking a "responsible" approach to launching Ask Photos, and states that that "your data in Google Photos is never used for ads" and is "protected with our industry-leading security measures".

It adds that in order to improve Ask Photos, "queries may be reviewed by humans, but only after being disconnected from your Google Account to protect your privacy". In other words, your questions are anonymized and Google confirms that the answers you get from the feature "are not reviewed by humans".

So while some may understandably have reservations about signing up for a feature that has such a deep insight into their personal life, the considerable flipside is having an AI-powered memory that can help you rediscover forgotten details – or perhaps settle arguments, too.

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It’s no secret that Google Photos is getting a few upgrades for video content - at the start of August 2024, we reported on a number of updates set to hit the popular photo cloud storage app. 

Code hidden within the update suggested that editing videos is set to become a lot easier, and included an improved UI and a speed increase/decrease option. 

Now, thanks to a teardown by Android Authority, we have an even better idea what to expect from Google Photos’ enhanced video editor.  

Video editing in Google Photos

Although not technically a video editing app, the ability to trim video content in Google Photos isn’t new - but it’s fair to say it’s pretty basic in design and functionality. According to the teardown of version 6.97 of the Android app, users can expect a much better experience, with more useful tools. 

Originally known as Spotlights, the new editing tools have been renamed to Presets, with four key functions available. 

Basic cut lets uses trim highlights of a video and enhance color

Slow Mo adds slow motion to parts of a video.

Track will track and zoom in on video subjects.

Zoom will increase or decrease magnification of an area. 

These options are to be found when selecting a video and tapping Edit. From here, users will need to scroll across to the Preset option - unavailable in the current version of the app. Using the new tools, Android Authority explained that effects and duration is controlled via a simple slider. 

So, we won’t be expecting anywhere near the levels of control found in the best video editing software we’ve reviewed - this isn’t a CapCut alternative, much less a replacement for Premiere Pro. But it could prove to be some of the best video editing software for beginners and content creators who need to cut clips fast. We just hope Google serves up a release date soon.  

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Google Photos on Android might receive a big update soon that will deliver another redesign and several new features. Android Authority discovered the latter after diving into the files of Google Photos version 6.94. These potential changes run the gamut, affecting various areas of the app.

First, the platform is reportedly gaining two new search filters to help people locate pictures. They are “Most Recent” and “Best Match” – and yes, their respective names adequately explain what they do. Most Recent sorts “search results chronologically, with the most recent” images (hence the name) showing up at the top. 

Best Match finds photographs “that closely match” a certain keyword. Android Authority gives the example of someone typing “Flower” into the search bar and Photos then bringing up photos displaying a flower within a frame. Additionally, the company may allow scrollable albums to appear above search results near the top.

Spotlighting

Next, evidence of " Spotlight " was discovered inside Google Photos 6.94. This tool is apparently capable of automatically editing videos down to “key moments and [applying] effects.” 

Very little is known about Spotlight at the moment, and while Android expert AssmebleDebug was unable to activate the software, he did find a few clues. He claims it’ll offer preset editing profiles that can be enabled with a single tap. 

AssembleDebug states Spotlight operates similarly to Video Spotlight in the Memory carousel. In that particular feature, Google Photos highlights sections of past videos and then shares them on the home screen as a “trip down memory lane” experience. It’s possible the feature functions similarly, but you'll have manual control over what to highlight.

Streamlining comments

Lastly, Google may be making it easier to comment on shared albums. AssembleDebug says the app will give users a direct way to add comments through a new floating bar. Tapping the onscreen album will cause it to appear. 

This is simpler than the current method, which requires you to tap a speech bubble icon to bring up the comments section before you can add one of your own. It’s a small change, but it could improve user engagement significantly.

AssembleDebug said he could turn on the revamped comment section by enabling the right software flag. However, because the feature is still in development, we don’t recommend going into the files and flipping the switch yourself, as it may not work.

Be sure to take all this leaked information with a pinch of salt. It’ll probably be a long time before we see any of these changes roll out. Or Google could, one day, decide to cancel all of these projects out of the blue. It’s entirely possible.

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Google Photos offers a lot of neat editing tricks for your photos, and it includes a video editor as well – and it looks as though that editor is getting some much-needed and genuinely useful upgrades in the near future.

As spotted by Android Authority, hidden code inside the latest Google Photos app for Android points to a number of upgrades, and they're going to be particularly useful for people who aren't that familiar with the app's video-editing capabilities.

The biggest upgrade seems to be larger buttons with clear labels on them for the Mute, Enhance, and Stabilize functions. This makes it much more obvious what these buttons do – they're currently represented by smaller pictures, with no text.

You can get into the Google Photos video editor by opening up a video clip inside the app, then tapping on the Edit button. As well as the tweaks we've mentioned, it's possible to crop videos and add a variety of filters and effects.

More features coming soon

This analysis of the Android app also gives us another look at the upcoming playback-speed control feature, which has actually been spotted before: it's not live yet, but it will enable users to speed up or slow down videos.

It seems as though a 4x speed increase or decrease will be the limit of the feature, and it's going to be possible to apply the change to the whole video, or just to a specific part of it.

There's no indication here as to when the upgrade to Google Photos might go live, but it looks as though the bulk of the necessary code is now in place, so it shouldn't be too long before we see these changes on Android (and quite possibly iOS too).

As yet we haven't seen any sign of Google Gemini-generated AI images showing up inside the Google Photos app, though it does look as though we might soon be getting an easier method for hiding images of people we don't want to see.

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Recently found evidence suggests Google Photos may receive a new tool to make hiding photographs displaying certain faces easier. Android Authority unearthed details of this update after digging through the latest patch of Google Photos on Android.

As the publication explains, the current method has you select a person’s face within the People section then tap the three-dot menu. This process will be further streamlined in the upcoming patch as faces will already be highlighted. All you have to do is open an image and then bring up the aforementioned People section. Like before, tap the three dots next to the icon where you will select “Hide face from memories.”

There, you'll have two options. You can either block the other person entirely on your account or have them appear less often in the Memories archive. Additionally, users are being given new choices within the three-dot menu. You can also edit the image label and alter it to a different one or change the cover image on a photograph.

These are small changes, yes, but Android Authority argues they simplify the process a lot. You won’t have to hop between images just to hide a single person on multiple photos, nor will users have to go through the app’s Settings menu to hide files in bulk. It can all be done conveniently through the People section.

Imminent release

Because the tool was discovered within the files and not on the app itself, it’s not available to anyone now. However, the publication successfully activated the revamped process on their smartphone, so an imminent release could be just around the corner. Screenshots show off a feature that looks finished, although we wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more to be done.

The publication believes the patch could roll out within the next “weeks or months at the most.” As with every leak, take this information with a grain of salt. 

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Google's AI-fueled Ask Photos feature, previewed at Google I/O 2024, has begun initial testing, as first shared by 9to5 Google. Ask Photos employs Google's Gemini AI to search a user's photo library using natural language without first organizing and tagging the image. Google hasn't shared any release date, but it looks like a select group of users are being asked to try it out and offer feedback before a broader rollout.

Ask Photos essentially expands Gemini's ability to parse visual information from a user's photos. The AI can then comb through images, presumably those in an album or on a device that the AI has permission to access and search through. It's not just a keyword hunt either, as the AI can also answer questions posed by the user. For instance, at the initial demonstration at Google I/O, CEO Sundar Pichai showed how he could use it to ask his phone for his license plate number, with the answer provided thanks to a photo of the license plate in his album. 

The version highlighted by 9to5 Google was discovered by a user on his Pixel 8 Pro. Unlike the official demo, where Ask Photos had its own tab, the feature now seems to be available on the Search tab via an "Ask" button next to the search bar. Tapping the button brings up Ask Photos as a new interface, including sample prompts and space to write your own response to the question, "What would you like to see?" Some aspects of the feature are still undergoing testing, though, as the "Photos of me over time" sample prompt brought back a technical error response and a suggestion to "Use classic search." Regardless, the feature apparently disappeared shortly after the user first saw it. 

Visual Search

Employing Gemini to look through photos obviously benefits users, especially those who have a lot of poorly organized images. Google Photos has some ability to find photos of specific events and people, but applying Gemini's AI models would vastly improve the platform's abilities. The AI could far better discern what photos are in the same place, identify people across different time periods, and otherwise organize images based on detailed criteria. 

Ask Photos is ultimately just another facet of Google's work to embed Gemini into every product and service it offers. Of course, the feature's apparent limitations and technical issues at the moment highlight the complexity of doing so. But, when combined with related rollouts like making Gemini available from the lock screens of Android phones, the bigger picture becomes clear, even without asking Gemini for help.

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If you have all your snaps stored in Google Photos, but want to shift them to the iCloud equivalent – perhaps because you’re making the leap from Android to iPhone – then you’re in luck, as Google has just implemented a new tool that’ll do exactly this.

This is part of the Data Transfer Initiative (DTI), and previously, Apple made it possible to transfer your photos and videos directly from iCloud Photos to Google Photos. Now, as announced by the DTI, Google has made it so you can send all your pics the other way, from its service to iCloud.

The ‘Transfer Data’ tool is rolling out over the next week, so you might not see it just yet – but it’s imminent, rest assured – and represents a very convenient way to get your images onto iCloud. (Although do note that your pics won’t be deleted from Google Photos, not unless you do that yourself, after the transfer).

It certainly makes things a lot easier than trying to manually shift a library of photos across (by downloading them to your PC, say, then uploading them to iCloud, which is a ponderous process).

If you’re wanting more details on the process, Google provides a nice, neat set of instructions in the form of this guide.

There is something of a catch, though, as The Register, which noticed the development, points out – and it pertains to the size of your existing photo library. Let’s dive into that next.

Analysis: Reasons to be careful

The mentioned caveat lies in the size of the free cloud storage allocation in Google Photos and iCloud. Assuming you’ve plumped for free accounts with both – far from unimaginable – the allowance is 15GB with Google’s service and 5GB with Apple’s.

So, as you can see, migrating from iCloud to Google won’t be a problem for freebie users, but as for the other direction – if you’ve got approaching 15GB of pics in Google Photos, that’s obviously not going to fit into Apple’s much more meagre free amount of storage. What happens then? Well, you’ll get 5GB worth of photos transferred over, then the migration will grind to a halt – and that’s that. In this case, you’ll have to pay up for more iCloud storage and run the transfer again.

It should also be noted that only supported file types will be moved over to iCloud, although that list encompasses most common picture and video formats. For image files, it includes JPG, GIF, PNG and RAW – the full list is available in Google’s instructions on the process that we linked above.

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At the Google I/O 2024 keynote today, CEO Sundar Pichai debuted a new feature for the nine-year-old Google Photos app: 'Ask Photos', an AI-powered tool that acts as an augmented search function for your photos.

The goal here is to make finding specific photos faster and easier. You ask a question – Pichai's example is 'what's my license plate number' – and the app uses AI to scan through your photos and provide a useful answer. In this case, it isolates the car that appears the most, then presents you with whichever photo shows the number plate most clearly.

It can reportedly handle more in-depth queries, too: Pichai went on to explain that if your hypothetical daughter Lucia has been learning to swim, you could ask the app to 'show me how Lucia's swimming has progressed', and it'll present you with a slideshow showcasing Lucia's progression. The AI (powered by Google's Gemini model) is capable of identifying the context of images, such as differentiating between swimming in a pool and snorkeling in the ocean, and even highlighting the dates on photos of her swimming certificates.

While the Photos app already had a search function, it was fairly rudimentary, only really capable of identifying text within images and retrieving photos from selected dates and locations. 

Ask Photos is apparently "an experimental feature" that will start to roll out "soon", and it could get more features in the future. As it is, it's a seriously impressive upgrade – so why am I terrified of it?

Eye spy

A major concern surrounding AI models is data security. Gemini is a predominantly cloud-based AI tool (its data parameters are simply too large to be run locally on your device), which introduces a potential security vulnerability as your data has to be sent to an external server via the internet, a flaw that doesn't exist for on-device AI tools.

Ask Photos is powerful enough to not only register important personal details from your camera roll, but also understand the context behind them. In other words, the Photos app – perhaps one of the most innocuous apps on your Android phone's home screen – just became the app that potentially knows more about your life than any other.

I can't be the only person who saw this revealed at Google I/O and immediately thought 'oh, this sounds like an identity thief's dream'. How many of us have taken a photo of a passport or ID to complete an online sign-up? If malicious actors gain remote access to your phone or are able to intercept your Ask Photos queries, they could potentially take better advantage of your photo library than ever before.

Google says it's guarding against this kind of scenario, stating that "The information in your photos can be deeply personal, and we take the responsibility of protecting it very seriously. Your personal data in Google Photos is never used for ads. And people will not review your conversations and personal data in Ask Photos, except in rare cases to address abuse or harm."

It continues that "We also don't train any generative AI product outside of Google Photos on this personal data, including other Gemini models and products. As always, all your data in Google Photos is protected with our industry-leading security measures."

So, nothing to worry about? We'll see. But quite frankly... I don't need an AI to help me manage my photo library anyway. Honestly Google, it really isn't that hard to make some folders.

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While there are plenty of video editing tools built into smartphones, it can take some skill to pull off an edit that's pleasing to the eye. But Google Photos looks set to change that.

By digging into an upcoming version of the Photos app, Android Authority contributor and code-diver Assemble Debug found a feature called “Enhance your videos”, and with a bit of work, got it up and running. As one would guess from the name, the feature is used to enhance videos accessed via the Photos app in a single tap.

Enhance your videos can automatically adjust brightness, contrast, color saturation and other visual parameters for a selected video in order to deliver an edited version that should look better than the original, at least in the eyes of Google.

While this feature isn’t official yet, it may be somewhat familiar to Google Photos users, as there’s already an option to enhance photos in the web and mobile versions of the service. In my experience, the enhance option works rather well, though it’s far from perfect and can overbake its enhancements.

But it makes sense for Google to extend this enhancement function to videos, especially in the TikTok era; do go and check out the TechRadar TikTok for news, views and reactions to the latest tech.

One neat thing about Enhance your video, according to Android Authority, is that all the processing happens on-device, thereby bypassing the need for an internet connection and cloud-based processing. Whether this will work on older phones without AI-centric chipsets remains to be seen.

Given that Assemble Debug got the Enhance your video feature up and running, it looks like it could be nearing an official rollout. We can expect to hear more about this and other upcoming Google features, as well as Android 15, at Google I/O 2024, which is set to kick off on May 14.

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An update to Google Photos could help you better organize pictures and make it easier to find your photos among all those saved memes, WhatsApp pics, and GIFs.

Reliable Tipster AssembleDebug spotted details of the update in the code for Google Photos version 6.79.0.624777117, which seemingly lets you view and organize all the pictures on your phone. However, the main ‘Photos tab’ currently displays not only photos you’ve taken with your phone, but also any downloaded image.

Even with careful folder use, the main Photos tab can easily become a mess of screenshots, album covers and silly GIFs. Add to this images downloaded from social media apps like X, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and it can be difficult to find specific pictures.

Currently, there are some limited filtering options in the In the Library tab, including shortcuts like Favorites, Utilities, Archive, and Bin. However, the update could allow you to filter the photos section with a toggle called ‘Hide clutter,’ which would filter results by hiding unwanted files and making your phone's storage appear less messy.

According to AssembleDebug, the feature would be located in the photos tab under the ‘Personalize your grid’ section, which is accessed via the three-dot settings menu. However, pictures will still be available in their associated album in the Library tab once filtered and hidden.

New memories 

The Memories feature may also be in line for an overhaul. Memories generates auto-playing collections of related pictures set to music, such as those from a day out, and you can edit and customize these selections before easily sharing them.

AssembleDebug claims that an upcoming UI update may change how memories are displayed from the current collection of grouped thumbnails, to a rounded rectangular single image taken from the album, providing a cleaner layout.

Another change AssembleDebug found was a new setting allowing you to disable the AI memory title suggestions, which can sometimes be inaccurate or wrong, for example labeling a friend or sibling in a romantic context.

You should be able to access the new option in Google Photos settings under Preferences > AI features by Labs. Look for  ‘Help me title,’ which you will be able to toggle on or off. Google has also updated its Support Page with this information on how to enable and disable this feature.

While the Google Photos app is a convenient tool for managing your phone's image library, the current cluttered view could significantly benefit from options like the addition of a ‘Hide clutter' option and disabling the AI memory title suggestions, and updated UI changes could further streamline and improve the user experience.

However, according to AssembleDebug these features are apparently in the early stages of development, so it may be some time before we see some or all of them on our phones.

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Barely a day after we reported on leaks that Google Photos might be giving all users access to the Magic Editor AI image editing tools for free, Google has made the announcement official.

From May 15 the Magic Editor tool will begin rolling out to everyone with Google Photos for no charge – provided you’re using a Chromebook Plus with ChromeOS version 118+, or a phone with at least 3GB RAM and running Android 8.0 / iOS 15 or higher.

The catch (as was leaked) is that you’ll only be able to save 10 edited images a month. If you want to save more images you’ll either need a Pixel device – Google has expanded access to all Pixels, not just the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro – or you’ll need to pay for a Google One 2TB plan or above, prices for which start at $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$19.99 a month. 

Magic Eraser 

Magic Eraser has been a Google AI editing trick for a few years – it originally launched on the Google Pixel 6 – and it’s helped improve a lot of the snaps I’ve captured on my phone.

Whether it’s removing a stranger from the background of an otherwise perfect shot, or cleaning up some of my own clutter that's sneaked into the frame, the eraser has been super-useful. That said, if you’re removing larger annoyances it can sometimes leave a noticeable blurry patch.

Magic Editor 

Next up is the Magic Editor itself, which lets you move subjects around with the help of a generative AI that fills in any gaps you’ve left. It’s especially useful for reframing shots so the image aspect ratio best suits the social media platform you’re posting on – such as changing your wide landscape images to Instagram-friendly square shots – or giving subjects on the fringes more prominence in the middle of the frame.

Much like Magic Eraser it’s not always perfect, but more often than not the edits look great.

Photo Unblur 

Maybe you’ve managed to frame your shot perfectly, and removed all annoyances in the background and foreground, only to realize that your otherwise perfect pic has been ruined by blur.

Photo Unblur uses an AI armed with a mixture of Denoise and Sharpen tools to salvage apparently ruined snaps. And, unlike using a photo editing app to sharpen images manually, the AI can make much more granular changes, an approach that typically produces images that look a lot more natural than those we’ve tried to un-blur by hand.

Portrait Light

Good lighting can make or break an image – especially a portrait. So what do you do when you’ve found a beautiful backdrop for your next selfie, but the sun’s in the wrong position, leaving your face in shadow?

Well, you snap the pic, and then use Portrait Light, which cleverly repositions and balances the light in your photos to artfully illuminate your face – letting you have your visual cake and eat it too, for a well-lit portrait no matter where you place yourself.

Sky Replacement  

Last but not least is Magic Editor’s Sky Replacement tool, which allows you to change those dreary gray clouds overhead into a bright blue yonder, with the AI also enhancing the lighting of your scene to match the new sky.

In the near-perpetually gray UK, where I live (or at least that can sometimes be how it seems), this AI edit can bring some much needed vibrancy to photos, while still keeping them looking natural.

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Google’s Magic Editor AI photo editing tool has pretty much made terrible phone snaps a thing of the past – at least for those who have access to it via Google One, or a Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro – by letting you change the sky, reposition your subject, and delete unwanted elements of your picture with ease. And it looks like it might be about to become much more widely available.

That’s because currently unused lines of code in the latest Google Photos app files – spotted by Android Authority – suggest that a free version of Magic Editor will be available at some point soon to all Google Photos users. Unfortunately, there’s a catch; unless you pay for Google One you’ll only be able to edit a handful of snaps every month.

Evidence of this change is several strings of code mentioning a “metered” version of Magic Editor. One specific line of code includes a message: “You can save %s edited photos every month or subscribe to a Google One Premium plan for unlimited saves.”

If that’s not a sign that a free metered version of Magic Editor is potentially on the way, we’re not sure what is.

Is a Google I/O announcement incoming?

As with all leaks like this, it’s worth taking the information with a pinch of salt. While the code is strong evidence that Google is working on some kind of free version of its Magic Editor tool there’s no guarantee it’ll launch in the near future or even at all.

To know for certain we’ll have to wait for an official announcement. If we’re lucky we might get one at Google I/O 2024 – its annual software-focused event – when the keynote happens on May 14.

Alongside possible Google Photos news, I/O should treat us to updates on Google’s other AI efforts such as Gemini – its generative AI – and its more mysterious open-source version Gemma. 

Android 15 is expected to make an appearance too, and we might even see a new Google Pixel 8a – though some aspects of the Pixel 8a’s leaked design concern us (thick bezels might be making an unwanted comeback).

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Android smartphones generally offer two different photo gallery apps – they’ll have Google Photos, and their own app as part of the brand’s suite of software (similar to how many Android phones can have two mail and browser apps). But it would be a lot simpler for your image management if you could combine the apps into one – and that might soon be the case for a few Android phone brands.

As first reported by Android Police, with the release of OxygenOS 14 and ColorOS 14 – both based on Android 14 – on OnePlus, Oppo and Realme phones, and Gallery app version 3.62.10-global on Xiaomi, the devices now all offer Google Photos integration in their own photo gallery app.

To turn it on, just open the gallery app, go into the app’s settings menu, look for a 'Backup to Google Photos option', and tap the Backup toggle. This will take you to the main Google Photos app, which will double-check that you want to give the gallery app access to Google Photos; if you confirm and complete the process you’ll be able to not only back up your snaps and videos to Google Photos through the gallery app, but you’ll be able to see your whole Google Photos library in the app too.

The only thing that doesn’t sync up are albums you create – your gallery app albums won’t appear in Google Photos, and your Google Photos albums won’t appear in the gallery app.

To turn off Google Photos integration on your OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, or Xiaomi phone you’ll just need to open up Google Photos, go to your settings, open the 'Apps & devices' menu, and then select Google Photos access. Here you can change which third-party apps have access to your library.

Where is Samsung's support? 

Unfortunately, Samsung users are missing out on the Google Photos integration, as are owners of devices that don’t support Android 14 – though interestingly Google Photos does offer support for gallery apps running on Android 11 or later, so there’s a chance we might see it come to older devices.

As for Samsung, while it has partnered with Google on devices like the upcoming Samsung XR headset, bringing Google’s Wear OS to its Galaxy Watches, and an improved Nearby Share, there’s no telling when or even if it’ll add Google Photos support to its gallery app. While the two brands may cooperate in many areas, they're still independent, and some odd app interactions – like a lack of Google Photos integration – can persist for longer than most would expect.

So we’ll have to wait and see if Google Photos integration will come to Samsung in the future, but we’d be surprised if it doesn't at some point, given how useful this solution is for people who hate having to use two different image library apps.

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Newly found code in Google Photos suggests the platform will soon introduce a weekly photo highlight reel known as My Week that can be shared with contacts. 

Evidence of the upcoming feature was discovered by tech blog TheSpAndroid after diving deep into the files of Google Photos version 6.69. There, they discovered strings with text descriptions explaining how the update could work. According to their findings, users will be able to select multiple pictures to make up a My Week highlight reel. They can then invite contacts to their account so they enjoy recently taken images.

TheSpAndroid explains this is similar to how regular albums currently work on Google Photos. However, My Week differentiates itself by being on the homepage. Invitees won’t have to dig through multiple folders to find the source. Android Authority, which also discovered the same strings of code, corroborates this opinion. They believe My Week will allow contacts to stay “up-to-date with your life” by automatically sending photographs every week. Users can pick out what they want to send to their contacts. 

There is some debate on how exactly the highlight reels will be shown. TheSpAndroid admits it's not sure whether images will be in a "memories carousel" (think Instagram Stories) or in a separate Memories tab.

Collecting photos in real-time

In addition to My Week, TheSpAndroid found evidence of another feature called real-time albums. 

The string of code suggests Google Photos will recommend placing images taken at an event or trip into one of these albums while you're still traveling. That way, you won’t have to remember to do it after the event is over. It'll save you a lot of time and hassle. The report states once an event is over you can tell the platform to stop uploading to a real-time album, implying Google Photos will collect images automatically. 

Do take the information here with a grain of salt. As Android Authority points out, “there’s no guarantee” that any of these features will see the light of day. It just means that Google is working on something. It is possible to enable the flags corresponding to MyWeek and the real-time albums, but they won’t do anything. 

The tech giant has been working on improving organization tools on Google Photos. Who among us does not have an unruly mess in our accounts? Very recently, the company rolled out Photo Stacks giving the platform the ability to automatically group pictures into alike groups. Back several months ago, a new creation tool was added to tie together clips into a minute-long highlight video. My Week seems to be the next step in Google’s photo organization endeavors.

While we're on the topic of photography, check out TechRadar's round of the best camera phones for 2024.

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Keeping your Google Photos library tidy can be tricky at the best of times, but Google is finally starting to roll out a long-promised feature called 'Photo stacks' on Android that should be a big help.

'Photo stacks' promises to tame unruly Google Photos libraries by automatically grouping similar photos into stacks. This means photos taken at a similar time will all be bunched together, with Google choosing a 'top pick' photo to represent the stack and showing a number in the top-right corner to tell you how many snaps are in the stack. 

The good news is that Photo stacks, which was originally announced back in November 2023, is starting to appear for many Google Photos users on Android after first debuting on iOS. But the bad news is that the roll-out appears to be completely random, being pushed out as a server-side update rather than an Android app update.

This means that you may not have received the feature yet – on the TechRadar team, only one of our many Android users has the feature. But there are a few things you can do to help. Firstly, it makes sense to update to the latest version of the Android Google Photos app (6.67.0), even though the feature isn't tied to that.  

Also, you need to have the Google Photos backup feature turned on for Photo stacks to be available. To do this, go to your profile picture in the top-right corner of the app, then tap Photos settings > Backup > toggle Backup on. 

Once you've done that, it's a case of waiting for an overlay card (see above left) to appear in the Google Photos app, which will ask you whether or not you want to enable Photo stacks. If you don't turn it on here, it's also possible to switch it on in the settings.

How to turn on Photo stacks

Already seen the Photo stacks overlay card but didn't want to turn it on at the time? You can also switch on the feature by going to the Photos tab in the Android app, tapping the three dots in the top-right corner, and then toggling 'Stack similar photos'.

Once you have some stacked photos, there are a few things you can do to manage them. Tap the 'top pick' cover image and you'll see a list of all of the photos in the stack (Google says a stack can contain up to 100 images).

If you want to edit the stack, go to the grid icon (four small squares) on the left of the list (see above middle), tap Select, and choose one of the photos. You'll now see some more options, including 'Set as top pick', 'Remove from stack', and 'Keep 1, delete the rest'. You can also add more images to the stack by hitting the 'plus' icon. 

Considering how useful this Google Photos feature is for keeping libraries tidy and free from duplicates, it's a shame that Google has taken so long to roll it out on Android – and in a fashion that makes it difficult to know when you'll get it, regardless of your device or location. But if you're a regular Google Photos user, then it's one to keep an eye out for.  

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Google is reportedly developing an AI assistant that will analyze personal photos, files, as well as Search results with the goal of telling “your life story”.

This news comes from CNBC which saw documents revealing that the tech giant recently held an “internal summit” where company execs and employees presented Project Ellman. According to the piece, the AI will offer a “bird’s–eye view” of someone’s life by grabbing files from your Google Account, and utilizing written biographies and adjacent content to understand context. This process includes sifting through the information files to pinpoint important moments. The Google employees claimed Project Ellman could deduce the day a user was born, who their parents are, and if they have any siblings. 

It doesn’t stop there because apparently, it's able to highlight chapters in your life like the years you spent at college or living in a certain city. Ellman can even learn your eating habits. If, for example, you upload a bunch of photos of pizza and pasta, the AI can infer that perhaps you’re a big fan of Italian food. The tech isn’t restricted to one person either as it can identify friends and family, plus social events you’ve been to.

Based on the report’s description alone, Project Ellman sounds very reminiscent of Memories on Google Photos, although on a much wider scale. 

Personal chatbot

CNBC states the presentation continued with demonstrating Ellman Chat, which was described as ChatGPT, but with the ability to “answer previously impossible questions”. Judging by the examples given, the questions aren’t necessarily impossible; just tricky especially if you're a forgetful person. For instance, you can ask the chatbot the last time your brother visited or for suggestions on a location you can move to based on the pictures you upload. 

Then we get to what may be one of Project Ellman’s secret purposes. By analyzing the screenshots users upload, the tech can make all sorts of predictions – from products you might buy, what interests you may have, plus future travel plans. The presenters also pitched the idea that it can learn what websites you frequent.

Project Ellman may know you better than you know yourself.

Analysis: All about you

We don’t think we have to tell you just how creepy all this sounds. We’re talking about an AI diving deep into your files, scrounging for every bit of data it can grab. Where is all that information going? 

Gemini, Google's new large language model (LLM) is implied to be the model that’ll power Project Ellman because it’s multimodal, or in other words, it can accept multiple forms of inputs besides text. Generative AIs need a constant stream of content to stay up to date. It seems like Google might be pole-vaulting over privacy boundaries, seeking more data to feed Gemini and keep it growing.

Granted, there’s no guarantee Ellman will ever see the light of day. A Google spokesperson told CNBC this is all an “early internal exploration”. If there are plans for a release, developers will take the time to ensure it’s helpful to people while keeping user privacy at the forefront. 

We urge you to take this statement with a grain of salt. Despite their supposed best efforts, the company has a storied history when it comes to privacy issues. The company gets into a lot of trouble for it. Just look at the Wikipedia page on the topic; it’s huge.

Hopefully, this is all overblown and the tech giant doesn’t launch a digital vacuum cleaner sucking up everything.

If you're looking for ways to start protecting your data, check out TechRadar's list of the best ad blockers for 2023. 

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Google Photos is introducing a pair of AI-powered features to help you organize all the family pictures and screenshots in your messy profile.

Moving forward, the service will be able to identify photographs “that were taken close together” and then group them together into what Google calls Photo Stacks. It appears the AI operates by selecting images that have visual similarities to each other. The software is not going to pick out pictures with a different composition or subjects in them. Once the selections have been made, Google Photos will choose one of them to be the lead image. Of course, you do have the option to manually pick the lead, “modify the stacks, or turn off” the feature entirely. 

Tidying-up screenshots

Google Photos will be doing something similar for “screenshots and documents in your gallery” by automatically categorizing them “into more helpful albums”. There will be an album for images of your ID card, and receipts, plus one for “event information” like an upcoming concert or festival. The goal here is to make it easier to locate “what you need when you need it without having” to dig through a mess of photographs. 

The AI will also allow you to set reminders on your phone calendar using the information from a screenshot of a ticket or “flyer for an upcoming event.” As an example, let’s say you took a screenshot of a ticket for a concert scheduled for December 2. You will see a “Set Reminder” option at the bottom of the picture in Google Photos. Tapping it causes a calendar entry to show up where you can enter more information or edit it. The company explains you can choose to “automatically archive your screenshots… after 30 days” which will hide them from the main gallery. They can still, however, be found in their respective albums.

The announcement states the Google Photos update is currently rolling out to Android and iOS. Be sure to keep an eye out for the patch when it arrives. No word if there will be a desktop version, although we did ask Google for more information. This story will be updated if we hear back.

While we have you, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best photo storage and sharing sites in 2023.

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Google Photos continues to get smarter and it could soon gain the ability to let you set reminders for certain tasks and events, all from within the photo management app. 

There’s already a myriad of smart AI-powered options within Google Photos, from being able to extract text from an image, translate languages, and use the Google Lens feature to pick out even more information in photos and search Google for highlighted items. But this forthcoming reminder function, spotted by The SpAndroid, continues to build out the Photos app into more than just a place to store, edit and peruse shots. 

Much like the “Copy text”, “Search” and “Listen”  ‘chips’ (aka prompts) that pop up to offer you various options, an incoming Google Photos update could soon serve up the option to “Set reminder”. 

Tapping this effectively lets you create a calendar entry for a corresponding Google Calendar app. So let's say you snapped a photo of a restaurant board offering specials on certain days, you could use the new feature to then set a calendar reminder to check out the restaurant on a particular day.

As someone who snaps photos on his phone to serve as reminders and reference points, this new feature seems particularly handy. Sure, it’s not hard to bounce into a calendar app and set your own reminder, but being able to do things with fewer taps or swipes through app menus is certainly appealing to me. And it also means the information you’re after is right in front of you, rather than forcing you to bounce between apps.

Unfortunately, this reminder feature doesn't appear to have rolled out widely yet, with it not popping up in Google Photos on my iPhone 13 Pro or Google Pixel 7 Pro. However such updates can take time to roll out worldwide. I’m running Google Photos version 6.60, so I may need to wait until version 6.61 as that was used by The SpAndroid to test the reminder feature.

Ever smarter software 

Given Google is pushing AI-powered tools into its software, as well as Pixel phones with the Pixel 8 Pro at the top of the pile, it’s no surprise to see it bolster Photos with AI-centric features. 

It might seem creepy that Google could extract all manner of information from your smartphone snaps, but these tools can be very handy at times, letting you do more with less back and forth between apps. 

I’m actually keen to see Google do more in embracing interoperability between its app ecosystem. I’d like Google Maps to pull Google Photos into my timeline so I can better retrace my steps when trying to remember where I went and when; you can manually add photos to Maps and map locations can be automatically added to photos, but it doesn't quite feel like there’s perfect harmony between the apps. 

Nevertheless, it’s neat to see how Google Photos continues to evolve. I only hope it sticks to the side of being handy and not fall into the realms of creepiness. 

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As we approach the end of 2023, we also inch nearer to Google’s deadline for resurrecting abandoned accounts before it presses the big red delete button.

In May 2023, Ruth Kricheli, VP for Product Management, said that the company would begin closing down unused accounts in December 2023, three weeks from now.

Account deletion will affect all Google accounts, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Calendar, and Photos.

Google will delete unused accounts beginning December 2023

Kricheli said that the move is one designed to curb attacks and security threats, including “spam, phishing scams and account hijacking.” Dormant accounts are more susceptible to attacks than ones that are maintained, because the company frequently rolls out security updates such as two-factor authentication (2FA) to improve account protection.

The company’s own research suggests that accounts that haven’t been used in a while are 10x less likely to have 2FA set up.

The mass purge will happen in phases, beginning with accounts that were created but never accessed again.

Google says it will send “multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion” before it takes the drastic action.

In order to keep accounts open, all Google requires is that you sign in at least once every two years to access its services. This could include: reading or sending an email; using Google Drive; watching a YouTube video; downloading an app on the Google Play Store; using Google Search; or using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service.

Active subscriptions, such as Google One, news publications, and apps, are also considered to be sufficient activity.

Kricheli added: “we do not have plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos at this time.”

Google Photos users, though, will need to specifically sign in to that app or web portal in order to keep the service from being deleted.

While these measures may seem drastic, the reality is that most users typically sign in more than once every two years, leaving the vast majority of abandoned accounts to be actually abandoned.

With data centers under intense scrutiny over energy and natural resource usage, decluttering its servers is a step in the right direction for Google and the planet.

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A newly discovered string of code in the latest Google Photos update reveals there are certain subjects that the Magic Editor tool on the Pixel 8 series will refuse to edit.

Android Authority recently dove into the Google Photos v.6.60 patch when they came across the guardrails. First, they state Magic Editor will not alter pictures of “ID cards, receipts,” or any other documents “that violate [the company’s] GenAI terms.” Second, the tool will not edit “images with personally identifiable information.” Third, it won’t change “human faces [or] body parts.” And finally, Magic Editor won’t work on large selected areas in a photo. When editing on your Pixel 8 smartphone, you’ll have to keep selections short and sweet. Highlighted portions requiring “a lot of data to be generated” will result in an error message popping up on the screen.

The report states Magic Editor could already block many of these changes, but the way it went about it was really vague. The problem with the previous version was it lacked “specific error messages” leaving Pixel 8 owners scratching their heads wondering what went wrong. Moving forward, things will be a lot more clear. The mobile device will tell you specifically what you did wrong. 

Room for improvement

Out of curiosity, we tested Magic Eraser on a Chromebook Plus laptop to see if it was possible to alter a driver’s license. While not as robust as Magic Editor, the tool also harnesses a generative AI model capable of creating pixels to cover up parts of a photo. As it turns out, it is possible to produce a clean driver's license with just Magic Eraser although it takes a little while nor is it perfect. It did have several flaws.

Perhaps Google doesn’t see the Chromebook Plus feature as capable as Magic Editor so it didn’t see the need to address its potential flaws. However, if the tech giant does want to ensure bad actors aren’t misusing their tech, they may want to close up that potential Chromebook Plus loophole.

It is worth pointing out that in their investigation, the news site was able to edit invoices. Those should technically violate Google’s terms of service as they are documents with personally identifiable information, but that wasn't the case. So there is room for improvement in a future update.

Potential future updates

In addition to the guardrail, Android Authority discovered clues that Magic Editor might gain “prompt-based editing”. This would give users the ability to move objects and people in an image via text prompts. For example, you could tell the Pixel 8 to move you toward the middle, erase some random guy in the back, and replace a cloud sky with a clear one – at least in theory. The report admits there isn’t any hard evidence suggesting how it’ll exactly work apart from a few lines of code, but it does look like Google is working on it.

If you’re looking to become a better photo editor but don’t know where to start, check out TechRadar’s list of the best free photo editing software. 

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Google Photos is already capable of some increasingly impressive photo and video tricks – and now it's learned to create automatic highlight videos of the friends, family, and places you've chosen from your library.

The Google Photos app on Android and iOS already offers video creation tools, but this new update (rolling out from October 25) will let you search the people, places, or activities in your library that you'd like to star in an AI-created video. The app will then automatically rustle up a one-minute highlights video of all your chosen subjects.

This video will include a combination of video clips and photos, but Google Photos will also add music and sync the footage to those tunes. These kinds of auto-created highlight videos, which we've seen in the Google Photos Memories feature and elsewhere from the likes of GoPro, can be a little hit-and-miss in their execution, but we're looking forward to giving Google's new AI director a spin.

Fortunately, if you don't like some of Google Photos' choices, you can also trim or rearrange the clips, and pick some different music. You can see all of this in action in the example video below.

So how will you be able to test-drive this new feature, once it rolls out on Android and iOS from October 25?

At the top of the app, hit the 'plus' icon and you'll see a new menu that includes options to create new Albums, Collages, Cinematic photos, Animations and, yes, Highlight videos.

Tap 'Highlight videos' and you'll see a search bar where you can search for your video stars, be that people, places, or even the years that events have taken place. From Google's demo, it looks like the default video length is one minute, but it's here that you can make further tweaks before hitting 'save'.

We've asked Google if this feature is coming to the web version of Google Photos and also Chromebooks, and will update this article when we hear back.

Tip of the AI iceberg

Google's main aim with photos and videos is to automate the kinds of edits that non-professionals have little time or appetite for – so this AI-powered video creator tool isn't a huge surprise.

We recently saw a related tool appear in Google Photos' Memories feature, which now lets you "co-author" Memories albums with friends and family. Collaborators can add their own photos and videos to your Memories, which can then be shared as a standalone video.

So whether you're looking to edit together your own highlights reels or, thanks to this new tool, let Google's algorithms do it for you, Google Photos is increasingly turning into the fuss-free place to do it.

The Google Pixel 8 Pro also recently debuted some impressive cloud-based video features, including Video Boost and Night Sight Video. The only slight shame is that these features require an internet connection rather than working on-device, though AI tools like Magic Eraser and Call Screen do at least work locally on your phone.

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The Google Pixel 8 event didn't deliver any massive surprises, thanks to the huge number of leaks we've seen recently. But as is tradition, Google did use its big annual phone launch to reveal an array of new camera tricks that are equal parts impressive, useful, and downright creepy. 

The actual camera hardware of the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro isn't anything particularly earth-shattering. The Pixel 8's rear cameras are largely unchanged from the Pixel 7, while the Pro version does get bigger upgrades with a new main camera, an improved ultra-wide, and a 48MP telephoto lens.

But it's been a while since sensor size and lens apertures were the biggest drivers of smartphone camera performance. These days, it's all about computational photography (and video) tricks, an art form that Google has pioneered. So what new modes did we get this year?

Quite a few actually, with Google's focus very much on video, in the form of Audio Magic Eraser and (for the Pixel 8 Pro, at least) new Video Boost and Night Sight Video features. But thanks to the combined powers of Google's Tensor G3 chip and some Google Photos algorithms, we also saw some powerful (and potentially controversial) new photography tricks in the form of Best Take and Zoom Enhance.

Here's a full breakdown of all of those new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 camera tricks, starting with the one we're feeling most conflicted about.

1. Best Take

• Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro

Let's start with what is arguably the most controversial new Pixel camera feature because it effectively lets you change the facial expressions of people in your group shots. Are you saying we aren't photogenic, Google? 

The key thing is that Best Take isn't using generative AI to change a frown into a smile – instead, it takes a series of photos and then lets you pick the best facial expressions for your final shot.

That makes it far more palatable to those who think AI is ruining photography, as it's effectively just doing an automated Photoshop-style blend on a burst of shots. Our US Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff was able to try out Best Take at the Google event and he's a fan; it's surprisingly effective, with little sign of the uncanny valley giveaways we expected. 

2. Video Boost

• Pixel 8 Pro only

Google went particularly hard on new video features at its Made by Google event – and the biggest one was arguably Video Boost, which is coming to the Pixel 8 Pro in December.

In theory, this is computational video done properly – rather than messing about with trying to introduce fake bokeh like the iPhone's Cinematic Mode (which Apple has gone very quiet on), the Pixel 8 Pro's new mode instead processes every video frame using its cloud-based HDR Plus pipeline.

This is a huge technological feat and one that will involve a little wait for your boosted video. But the results could also be polarizing. Google was keen to show side-by-sides of Video Boost with the iPhone 15 Pro Max's video, pointing to its improved dynamic range and vivid color. 

This saturated HDR look isn't necessarily to everyone's taste, though, so it could be one to reserve for particular situations (like high-contrast scenes).

3. Night Sight Video

• Pixel 8 Pro only

Google's Night Sight has been a hugely influential computational photography trick, and now it's coming properly to videos on the Pixel 8 Pro, from December.

Night Sight Video is effectively a low-light version of Video Boost, using multi-frame processing to enhance detail and exposure in dark scenes. Google claims the mode is the "best low-light video on any smartphone", which it says is based on third-party evaluation comparing major US smartphone brands.

While Google has announced a version of Night Sight for videos before at Google IO 2021, this effectively just stitched photos together to make an animation. We don't yet know what resolution and frame rates Night Sight Video is available for, but we're looking forward to taking it for a spin around a wintery London.

4. Audio Magic Eraser

• PIxel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro

Audio quality has long been an afterthought in smartphone video, but Google's aiming to change that on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro with a new 'computational audio' trick called Audio Magic Eraser.

This uses machine learning to recognize and divide the audio in your video into separate channels – for example, speech, crowd, wind, noise, and music. You can then turn off any unwanted ones.

Google's demo of a baby talking with a dog's loud background barking removed was impressive, but we'll be keen to test this in the field to see how much it impacts the quality of those individual sound layers.

5. Magic Editor

• Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro

Back in May, Google announced that Magic Editor (a new generative AI trick that aims to make bad photos obsolete) was en route to select Pixel phones later this year. Well, now we know that those phones are the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.

Magic Editor is effectively Magic Eraser on steroids, letting you pick and move objects in your photos, reposition them, and effectively become a Photoshop whizz without having to go anywhere near masking tools and adjustment layers. 

It even gives you contextual suggestions on things to change, like swapping out your grey sky for a golden-hour sunset. Some will call it the death of photography. Others will see it as a massive time-saving crutch. Either way, the "experimental" feature will now be available in Google Photos on its latest Pixel phones.

6. Zoom Enhance

• Pixel 8 Pro only

Google seems to take great delight in making sci-fi concepts an unsettling reality –see its Call Screen feature, which sees an AI robot interview the person calling you to see if they're worthy of being put through to the real you. Another slightly less chilling, but equally impressive feature, is Zoom Enhance.

Yes, the CSI:Miami 'Enhance' meme is going to get a few more hits today, as the Google Photos feature is the closest we've seen to a real-world equivalent  – kind of. Because it's powered by generative AI, Zoom Enhance will very much invent some extra detail when you pinch to zoom into a photo.

That isn't a million miles from how interpolation works, though we doubt it'll stand up in court. Still, it does look like another impressive photographic trick to add to the PIxel 8 Pro's armory – and it even gives you an 'Enhance' button so you can pretend you're in a detective drama. 

7. Pro Controls

• Pixel 8 Pro only

Apple's reluctance to build pro-friendly camera controls into its Pro phones has always been a bit baffling, but that's what Google has done on the Pixel 8 Pro. Its new Pro Controls lets you tweak settings like ISO sensitivity, shutter speed, and focus.

That promises to be a particularly big bonus for video shooters, though Google doesn't go anywhere near as far as phones like the Sony Xperia 1 V – which has three separate camera apps (Photo Pro, Video Pro, and Cinema Pro). Still, more control is always good if you don't want to rely on one of the best camera apps.

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