In a recent APK teardown, folks at XDA have spotted Google working on a homescreen widget for the Memories option on Google Photos.
Notably, Google released a new update back in October for iOS. It added a homescreen widget for the Google Photos app, but for iOS devices.
This homescreen widget cycles through the “Memories” album created by Google Photos automatically. On Android, the Google Photos Memories feature appears on top of the “Photos” tab.
But soon, we may see Google add a homescreen widget, just like on iOS, for Android users that will enable users to view photos of their “Memories” album through a widget.
This new feature for Google Photos on Android was spotted on the app version 5.49, which is currently rolling out for users. Decompiling the APK that a widget is under construction.
There are multiple strings that show Google is indeed working on an iOS-like Google Photos homescreen widget for the Android app.
However, do note that the features found on an APK teardown post don’t necessarily mean that it will be available for everyone. It basically depends on Google, whether to include the spotted feature in the coming updates or not.
The strings on the widget suggest Memories album will include images from this week last year
For your reference, here are the strings of codes that folks at XDA found after the APK teardown of the Google Photos Android app version 5.49;
<stringname="photos_widget_account_not_found">Account not found</string><stringname="photos_widget_description">Rediscover moments from Google Photos</string><stringname="photos_widget_label">Your memories</string><stringname="photos_widget_loading">Loading…</string><stringname="photos_widget_no_logged_in_account">Please add your Google Account before setting up the Google Photos widget</string><stringname="photos_widget_one_year_ago_title">1 year ago</string><stringname="photos_widget_select_an_account">Select an account</string><stringname="photos_widget_this_week_subtitle">This week</string>Taking a look at the strings and widgets of the preview image section suggests that the Memories album will only show images for this week last year.
Being an optimist, we hope this Google Photos homescreen widget app will behave more like how it does on iOS. Meaning you should be able to add a widget that cycles through all of your Memories album that is generated automatically by the app itself.
Even after finding the requisite receiver and activities being listed in the app’s Manifest, our friends at XDA weren’t able to add the widget on the homescreen. Apparently, that is disabled at the moment. Google may enable this feature in a future update or via a server-side update.