Google Photos v4.8 has landed on Android smartphones this week, and at it did not bring any notable features to the table, only some minor tweaks to wording, but its teardown does reveal some upcoming features. According to the source’s teardown, Google Photos will get a new / enhanced feature for automatically suggested sharing, amongst others.
Now, some of you may know that suggested sharing was already announced for Google Photos back in 2017, but Google is planning to add either a similar feature, or upgrade the existing one. The company refers to this feature as “peoplekit” in the code, and it uses your interaction with the app in order to suggest sharing, it seems.
The teardown did not exactly reveal as to how exactly will the feature function, but it will probably take into account your interactions with the app, various interactions, and suggest sharing based on that. We’re not sure if it will take your past sharing into account, or more actions (such as where the photos were taken, who were you with, and so on), but that’s the gist of it.
In addition to suggested sharing, Google may also add links to other Google-made apps in the navigation drawer on the left. Some of you may know that the company’s PhotoScan app is already there, but the code suggests that more such links are coming, so we may see Snapseed there, for example, as it is closely related to Google Photos considering it’s an image editing app.
Another couple lines of code say that suggested cropping may become a part of the app as well, in other words, Google Photos may start suggesting crop actions at some point in the future, in case a particular photo needs to be cropped, or Google’s AI thinks so.
Recent Changes
Back in September, Google Photos actually received a new update, bringing a new coat of paint to the app. Google’s new Material Design hit the application, though its functionality did not really change at that point, while the menus remained the same as well, for the most part, but the icons were changed along with some other elements of the UI.
Google Photos Live Albums started rolling out to the app back in October, in select regions, while the service stopped offering free storage for unsupported videos last month, in December. A report that surfaced earlier this month claimed that Google Photos is testing a new sharing menu, you can read more about that here.
Google had released a dark theme to a number of its applications thus far, including YouTube and (Android) Messages, amongst others, and according to reports, Chrome will get it soon as well. Google Photos may be a part of Google’s plans in that regard as well, and we’re pretty sure that many of you would love to get a dark theme for Google Photos, I know I would. So, that could be a potential change in the coming months, as it seems like Google took releasing dark themes seriously due to some major battery-saving properties of such themes, on smartphones with OLED displays.