Radical Google Photos Change Coming To Millions Of Smartphones

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Android users will soon be able to search their Google Photos collections without having to open the app, but this could result in a nasty surprise.

Google’s latest on-device search update enables users to search Google Photos with a simple swipe up on the Android home screen.

If you’re lucky enough to be running Android 12, you will have already noticed the new universal search capability Google recently added to the app drawer. From here you can search for almost anything you want, including settings, shortcuts, apps, and conversations.

Now, according to a report by 9to5Google, this search function is being expanded to deliver search results directly from Google Photos. On some devices, according to the report, a search for ‘screenshots’ returns a carousel of screenshot thumbnails pulled from Google Photos’ screenshots album. These can then be viewed or shared directly from the search results. Tapping on the ‘Photos’ banner, takes you directly to the relevant album within Google Photos.

Unfortunately, the feature appears to be limited to screenshots for now, but this functionality paves the way for greater integration with Google Photos in the future.

It would be great to be able to search for a person and receive results from contacts, conversations and Google Photos all in one place right there in the app drawer rather than having to explicitly load up Google Photos to perform a separate search.

However, there are obvious privacy concerns with such an approach. As any of your photos could potentially appear on screen (albeit in thumbnail form), you would be unwise to use universal search while someone else has sight of your phone. I hope Google will add a switch to toggle Google Photos results on and off, as it has for various other categories, although no such option currently exists for screenshots.

Testers at 9to5Google found the new search functionality on only one of four available devices running Android 13 developer preview 1. However, I’ve found the same functionality available when running Android 12 on a Pixel 4. This suggests the feature is currently under test and available only to a select group of users, but won’t require Android 13, or the latest hardware, when it eventually rolls out to everyone.

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