Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Photos is moving Memories into your Collections.
- Memories are also being rebranded as “Moments.”
- The change is rolling out now on iOS, but should be hitting Android soon.
With the holiday season now in full swing, we’re taking more photos than ever: decorations, food, family, and more. And while our favorite Android smartphones offer tons of storage for keeping all those pics close by, when you’re snapping this many of them, just keeping track of those photos can feel a little overwhelming. Thankfully, we’ve got Google Photos here to help, and right now we’re checking out a little tweak to the way the app organizes our pics.
Last summer Google introduced Memories, a tool that used AI to scan through your photos and automatically compile them into “scrapbook-like” collections. That was great, but then last month we started digging up evidence that suggested Google was working on a change to how these Memories would be labeled and accessed within Photos. Instead of existing on the bottom navigation bar as an option unto itself, it looked like Photos was prepping to move Memories into Collections. And more than that, we found signs suggesting that once within Collections, Memories would be renamed to Timeline.
We were even able to get this new interface showing up in Photos, but Google hadn’t yet pushed any of these changes live. Well, now it looks like that’s finally starting to happen, though not exactly in the way we first expected.
Google Photos on iOS has started moving Memories in Collections, as spotted by 9to5Google. We haven’t seen the same shift yet on Android, but considering the prep work we’ve already reported on, it’s only going to be a matter of time now. Maybe more interesting, though, is the change in branding: Instead of turning Memories into Timeline, Google is renaming Memories as Moments.
That’s probably a good move as Moments sounds more in line with how the tool is actually packaging our pictures — it’s not like one big timeline, or anything. We’ve already spotted the Android app internally make that change from Timeline to Moments in an update a couple weeks back, and with this now becoming user-facing on iOS, it looks like Google has finally settled on a name it likes.
Functionally, don’t expect any changes when Moments finally comes to Google Photos on your phone — this is just a new place to find Memories by a new name.