Key Takeaways
- Google Photos’ image search feature has been broken for roughly 20 days. The feature stopped showing search results, or showed results that had nothing to do with the search prompt.
- Search functionality broke sometime between the release of Google Photos 6.93.0.657009179 and version 6.95.0.663027175 in August.
- A fix for the search bug is rolling out now. Update to the latest version of Google Photos to restore search functionality.
After being broken for roughly 20 days, a fix for Google Photos’ search bug seems to be rolling out now.
The media storage app lets you look up specific photos by typing in context, like names, locations, text within photos, or by describing the specific scene. With the recently-announced Ask Photos, the classic image search feature is got a solid boost, essentially allowing you to add more context to your searches to find more specific things. This can include prompts like “XYZ person sitting on the patio,” or “hiking on a path surrounded by trees.”
The improved search began rolling out on September 5, but before users could start playing around with it, search within Google Photos seems to have fallen apart.
Reports as far back as 20 days ago (September 1) suggest that the search feature failed to show results, and in the instances where it did function, it showed results that had nothing to do with the search prompt. This isn’t an isolated incident as it has already been reported multiple times since the start of September (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). However, the bug wasn’t widespread either. None of us at AP were seemingly affected.
“After updating Google Photos, the search function stopped working. Whenever I search for anything, I just get a blank page, which seems like an error because normally there would be a message saying “no results” if nothing is found,” wrote user Straight_Random_2211.
Users also report that the feature broke sometime between the release of Google Photos 6.93.0.657009179 and version 6.95.0.663027175, indicating that the bug might be older than 20 days. Rolling back to August 1-released 6.92.0.657277585 version seemed to have fixed the issue for one user.
Update your Google Photos app to restore search functionality
The bug went under the radar for us at AP, considering that none of us were really affected by it. Those affected should note that the Google Photos team has rolled out a fix. “You helped us identify a bug where no search results were being returned for a small set of Android users. We’ve fixed that and now search should work as expected,” wrote the tech giant in a recent community update.
Update to the latest Google Photos version 7.0.0.674947721 to revive the app’s search functionality.