Google is testing a powerful upgrade to one of its more useful Google Photos features
Google is testing a new Google Photos enhancement that could dramatically improve one of its best features, according to a new report.
Well-known app investigator Assemble Debug recently discovered that Google has begun testing an important update feature that helps users reduce clutter by grouping selected photos into “stacks.”
Google Photos can already do this for you automatically if you select the “Stack similar photos” option in your settings, but gives you no control over which photos get moved into stacks. However, Google now appears to be expanding the feature by allowing users to select and stack photos manually.
This much-needed upgrade would make the feature significantly more powerful, but potentially cause a few problems too.
Google Photos Photo Stacks: What Do They Do?
If you have photo stacking turned on, Google will make an educated guess as to which photos to stack based on recognizing similar content and shots taken in quick succession. Grouping pictures in this way can clean up your library significantly if you have a lot of very similar photos, for example, if you like to take multiple shots when trying to capture that perfect selfie.
One picture in each stack is automatically selected as the “top pick” image, which will always appear at the top of the pile when scrolling through your library. Afterward, you can change the top pick manually to ensure that only your favorite selfie shows up; the other pictures are tucked away safely in the stack.
Using stacks in this way can remove a vast amount of clutter from your photo library as you’ll only see the top picks as you scroll through, not the hundreds of near duplicates.
Google Photos Photo Stacks: Giving Users More Control
One problem with this automatic approach is that Google Photos doesn’t always stack the photos you want it to. Sometimes, you might want to stack a set of very different-looking photos or photos taken further apart in time. Currently, the only way to manually group such images is to create a new album for each group. However, this wouldn’t help declutter your library because each photo would still occupy a slot in your timeline based on when you took it.
Letting users create stacks manually would allow them to correct any mistakes in Google’s photo stack selections and build new stacks from scratch.
Google Photos Photo Stacks: Potential Issues
This feature upgrade has yet to be enabled, so we don’t know if Google will restrict which photos you can manually add to a photo stack, but I can foresee potential issues if the feature isn’t used carefully.
Grouping random photos into stacks willy-nilly could make them very difficult to find later, as you may find yourself having to open your photo stacks one by one to look for a missing picture. Furthermore, If you scroll through your timeline to browse images taken on a particular date, any photos you’ve moved into Photo Stacks might not be visible. Moving a picture into a stack hides it from your timeline, making it much harder to find.
The code found within the Google Photos Android app reads as follows:
“<string name="photos_allphotos_menu_cleangrid_manual_grouping">Stack Photos</string>”
That’s not much information to work with, so we’ll have to wait and see whether Google decides to roll out this Photo Stacks upgrade. Giving users more control is great as long as there’s not too much potential to mess things up. Another recent leak reveals that Google Photo is to give users more control over Partner Sharing.
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