Android’s Photo Picker Is About To Get The Search Feature You’ve Always Wanted
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android’s native Photo Picker will soon let you search through your Google Photos library.
- Although announced last year for a 2024 release, the search feature is finally being tested, hinting at an upcoming launch.
- This long-awaited search bar will appear within the Photo Picker and should arrive via Google Play System Updates, not tied to Android 16.
If you’re like me, you probably have tens of thousands of photos backed up in Google Photos or a similar service. Finding specific memories can be tough, but the Google Photos app excels here thanks to its robust search feature — a hallmark of many Google products. However, this powerful search capability hasn’t been available when Browse your Google Photos library through Android’s native Photo Picker, though that’s finally set to change soon.
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The Photo Picker is a feature that Google introduced in Android 13 that lets users choose specific images or videos to share with an app, as opposed to giving an app broad access to your phone’s gallery. While the Photo Picker is more private by design, it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles that built-in image pickers tend to have, such as sort options and a search bar.
Last May, Google announced it would finally add local and cloud search support to Android’s Photo Picker. The company stated the feature would roll out sometime in 2024, but we’re now well into 2025 with no signs of an impending launch. Google hasn’t followed up with any updates on the feature’s status, and it hasn’t shared any screenshots or recordings of what it looks like either.
We might not have to wait much longer for the feature to roll out, though, as Android Authority contributor Kamila Wojciechowska tells me it’s enabled on her device. As you can see in the image embedded below, the search feature in Android’s Photo Picker works exactly as you’d expect. You simply tap the search bar at the top of the picker, enter a query, hit enter, and choose your desired image or video from the results.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
As far as I can tell, search support is already enabled in recent Google Play System Updates, so this feature can theoretically go live at any time. However, Google Photos has yet to start rolling out search support in the Photo Picker, which is why it doesn’t appear for most people. There’s no indication the search feature is tied to Android 16, either, so it should arrive on all versions that support the Photo Picker. We don’t know when that’ll happen, but hopefully it’s soon — the search bar is one of the Photo Picker’s most highly requested features.
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