This Useful Google Photos Feature Is Getting A Much Needed UI Update (APK Teardown)
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is readying updated UI elements for Google Photos’ Photo Stacks feature.
- We’ve managed to trigger the changes in version 7.19 of the app.
- The changes should improve the fluidity of managing your photos within stacks.
Google Photos has offered its useful Photo Stacks feature for over a year. It effectively groups similar photos taken within a short period of time into a neat “stack.” It’s wonderful for saving space and managing duplicate shots. Despite its utility, Photo Stacks was never the easiest feature to manage, but it appears that Google is finally addressing this.
We’ve managed to activate new UI elements within Google Photo version 7.19, which should simplify the management of Photo Stacks content.
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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
The current behavior of Photo Stacks demands an upward swipe to access more information about the images. You can then choose what you’d like to do with the stack as a whole or images within it, including setting a particular photo as the top image or deleting multiple shots. This process, while allowing users full access to the available list of options, isn’t ideal if you want to accomplish a quick task.
However, the UI update we’re activated will allow users access to a much simpler, quicker context menu by tapping an arrow alongside the stack. See the changes in the video below.
The available context menu commands include:
- Set as top pick
- Keep this, delete rest
- Remove from stack
- Unstack
- Multi-select
- Manage stacks
Nothing changes regarding Multi-select. Tapping this will produce the original menu, which allows users to select multiple images to remove from the stack and perform other common tasks. Manage stacks allows more granular control of the feature itself.
It’s a minor quality-of-life change but one that’ll massively improve the workflow for people who frequent the feature on Google Photos. It’s unclear when the UI change will make its full debut.
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