Google Photos Stacks Just Got A Much-Requested Feature, But You Can't Use It Yet

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Summary

Manual control over photo stacks has launched on Google Photos for iOS.
Until now, photo stacks couldn’t be created or added to manually.
Android users can expect this feature to be implemented soon, although there’s no definite launch timeline.

Phone cameras are so good, people have mostly stopped buying point-and-shoot cameras. Cutting-edge sensors make image capture surprisingly good for such thin devices, computational image processing makes up for many physical hardware shortcomings, and powerful microprocessors make techniques like burst photography possible, even on low-cost phones.

But you need a way to organize all those pictures, especially when something like burst mode deposits a dozen nearly identical images in your gallery at once. Since the addition of photo stacks, Android users have repeatedly requested manual control over adding and removing photos to and from a stack. Google is finally implementing this long-awaited feature — within the Google Photos iOS app. Thankfully, code reviews indicate it will eventually make its way to Android, but it’s ever-so-slightly ironic that iPhones got it first (Source: Android Authority).

In a feature we should’ve had all along

A screenshot of photo stacks in Google Photos for iOS.

Source: Android Authority

Note the new “Stack photos” option that now appears when selecting multiple images in Google Photos for iOS. Screenshot courtesy of Android Authority.

Google Photos introduced photo stacks in late 2023 to automatically group your most similar photos. It did help reduce clutter, but it’s always been automatic. In addition to assigning all related burst mode photos to a single stack, Google image recognition can group visually similar photos, even if they weren’t taken at the exact same time.

a phone displaying google photos search results on a table next to two red apples

Earlier this year, code reviewer Assemble Debug spotted code strings within the app referencing manual grouping. Over five months later, iOS users are starting to see the fruits of Google’s labor. You can already remove individual images from a stack or disassemble an entire stack on either smartphone OS, but manually creating and adding to a stack has been a long time coming.

There’s no official word on when the feature will hit the Android version of Google Photos. But it shouldn’t be too much longer, now that iPhone users have seen the sneak preview.