Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is working on some big UI changes for Photos, including Material 3 Expressive elements.
- We’re also seeing work on a new interface for more prominently indicating what’s going on with backups.
- Those banners now include an actual ETA on how long until your backups are done.
What’s the most valuable thing on your phone? Sure, the phone itself is probably worth a whole chunk of change, but that’s replaceable. For a whole lot of us, it’s probably the photos we capture with our cameras — and the memories they represent — that we’re most afraid of losing. That’s exactly why cloud backup solutions like the one that Google has baked into its Photos app are so popular, affording us some much-appreciated peace of mind. Right now, we’re looking into some work Google’s been up to that appears to do a better job at communicating just how Photos is managing our picture backups.
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Right now, when you’ve got backups enabled in Photos, the impact on the app’s interface is pretty minimal. New photos in your gallery display a small icon as they await their turn to be uploaded, at which point we see the circular progress indicator fill, to finally be replaced with a checked cloud. And as this is happening, we get a similar progress indicator circling our user icon in the screen’s top-right corner.
We recently uncovered Google’s efforts towards bringing Photos a Material 3 Expressive overhaul, but while investigating that refresh we also spotted the app trying on a new approach to how backups work. This is version 7.30 of the Photos app we’re talking about, although none of the changes depicted here are yet publicly facing.
With this new UI, if you launch Photos and don’t have backup engaged at all, you’ll see the screen on the left, gently reminding you that your pics only live on-device. That message goes away after a moment, but Google clearly seems to be pushing users in the direction of using it. If you are you backups but just don’t have any new pics to upload, you’ll find that “Backup complete” text, and tapping it lets you see details on exactly how many shots you’re storing on Google’s servers.
We’ve also got an early look at changes Google’s thinking about for how uploads are displayed:
When you’ve got local pictures that have not yet been stored on Google’s servers, you’ll initially see that “preparing” message ahead of your upload actually commencing. Once it’s underway, you’ll still see all the old progress indicators we had before, but now also have access to this banner up top offering an easy way to check on overall progress, and get a clear ETA on how much longer you can expect your uploads to take. Especially when you’ve got a ton to back up all at once, or you’re struggling with slow data speeds, having an actual number here to refer to sounds like a big improvement over the guesswork we’ve been stuck with so far.
Right now we can’t say when of if these changes might go live, but if the Material 3 Expressive refresh is anything to go by, we wouldn’t be surprised to formally meet them sometime in the next few months.
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