You Asked, And Google Listened: Photos Reverts Unpopular Partner Sharing Changes

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

Back in November last year, Google Photos released an update to its Partner Sharing feature. This update quietly stripped away the ability to automatically share photos from third-party apps from the feature. Now a new update has given users more control over what Partner Sharing sends.

As a quick refresher, Partner Sharing is a feature that allows you to automatically share your library of images with others. This includes screenshots, downloads, and photos. Originally, it would share any image, but the November update limited automatic sharing to only photos obtained from first-party apps.

In early January, Android Authority conducted an APK teardown of the Google Photos app. That teardown revealed that Google was planning to bring back the ability to automatically share images from third-party apps — like social media — through a new settings toggle. This week, Google officially announced it is beginning to roll out this setting on Android.

When the functionality was removed back in November, the move was not well received. According to the company, the decision to bring the functionality back was based on user feedback.

Unlike before, this latest update gives users the opportunity to choose whether or not Partner Sharing sends images from third-party apps to others. The setting is off by default, so you’ll have to go into Google Photos’ settings to enable it. If you want to enable the setting, all you have to do is go into Photos settings, navigate to Sharing, go into Partner Sharing, and find the toggle that says “Include content from other Android apps.” However, if you’re concerned about being bogged down by clutter, you may want to think twice about activating this function.

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