On The Year-Long Google Photos Redesign

The big development for Google Photos in the past year is the Gemini-powered “Ask Photos,” but that shouldn’t overshadow a series of redesigns that feels like it concluded with the simplified bottom bar that rolled out earlier this week.

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Compared to where we were at the start of 2024, navigating the Google Photos app — all three tabs and beyond — feels quite different a year later.

In the Photos tab, the goal this past year has been to reduce clutter from auto-grouping Stacks (for pictures that are visually similar) to choosing whether you want to see “content from other apps.” The latter lets you set:

Only show backed-up content: See photos from other apps that are backed up or are waiting to be backed up
Hide clutter from other apps: Photos like screenshots, GIFs, and memes are hidden after they are backed up. Per-app customization offered.

All this is presented in a new “Photos” view settings page — tap the three-dot overflow button in the top-right corner — that also lets you set a Layout (Comfortable, Day, or Month).

Then there’s the Collections tab that replaced your “Library.” The main change here was the removal of a “Photos on device” carousel that showed local folders. The aim was to group everything into high-level collections, with the rest of this page no longer reverse chronological albums.

Both those changes resulted in an extra tap, but I can see the thinking behind presenting users with prominent groupings for People & pets, On this device, Albums, Documents, Places, and Moments that they can dive into. (The ability to pick between a list and grid view is nice.) Some of these collections were previously found on the search page, which has been simplified a great deal.

As of this week, the Memories feed has been subsumed by Collections and renamed to Moments. As such, Memories just refers to the story-like carousel at the top of the main Photos tab.

Meanwhile, the 2×2 grid up top for Favorites and Trash, as well as two dynamic shortcuts “based on the items you navigate to the most.” One visual/usability bug I’ve noticed since this page launch is how the top bar covers some of those shortcuts, with the ability to scroll up unavailable.

L-R: Library tab, canceled Library redesign (2022), and Collections

The Search tab is now a simple list with some “Suggestions” to put the emphasis on text lookup instead of a screen you browse. Of course, the LLM-powered “Ask Photos” is being tested in the US. One nice trick is how you can double-tap “Ask” in the bottom bar from anywhere to quickly access “classic search.”

I haven’t really taken to conversational image search in the past few months, because I usually have an idea of what I’m looking for and the term (or date range) that will get me there. In general, I’m not really using my Google Photos library as a corpus of personal life knowledge.

That said, I clearly see the value and might use it more when gemini.google.com can access it. Google recently announced that a Google Photos Gemini app/Extension is coming and is testing the “Personalized” model that will presumably be integrated into the main offering once it’s out of experimental testing.

Ask Photos vs. classic search

Outside of bottom navigation, the top bar is now home to a bell icon for the Updates feed. It’s how you see activity related to shared albums, conversations, sharing updates, and other changes.

Overall, I think these changes help noticeably modernize and clean up Google Photos. Any changes to photo apps are notoriously contentious as seen with iOS 18 and Google’s past attempt to update the Library before landing at Collections.