If your Google Photos library is an unruly jumble of screenshots, photos, and other digital debris, a new app update could be about to restore order, if you're an Android user.
As spotted by Googlenws.ru, some new features hidden in the latest version of the Google Photos Android app (version 5.78.0.428376309) may soon offer a cleaner way to organize your library, as well as new ways to import cliches.
The main change is in the Library tab, where the File, Home Folder, Tools, and Trash icons have been removed from the page to make way for a helpful new tab carousel. These include All, My Albums, On Device, and Shared Albums.
These folders seem like a neater way to filter your snaps, based on where they're stored. The "All" tab naturally includes snapshots that are stored locally on your phone and in the cloud, while "On Device" only contains photos stored on your phone.
"My Albums" takes you to cloud-based albums, and you can also switch to only albums you've shared with others by going to the "Shared Albums" tab. Beneath these tabs are handy separate folders for screenshots and snapshots taken on your phone.
In current versions of the Android and iOS apps, it's also not immediately obvious how to import snapshots to Google Photos from other services. That's probably why Google added a new "Import Photos" option to the Library tab, which takes you to a variety of useful new options.
These include the 'Copy from other services' option, which will let you import Facebook and iCloud snapshots from the app, as well as 'Copy from Camera' to let you take pictures from a connected camera. Another beta option, "request photos from friends," will apparently let you send your friends a link asking for the photos they forgot to share with you.
Google also makes it easy to import print photos into your library. The 'Scan photos with your phone' option will take you to the PhotoScan app, although this is still a separate app rather than integrated with Google Photos.
All of these features are currently only available to a small circle of Google Photos users with the latest version (5.78.0.428376309), but they are expected to roll out more widely soon.
Review: A useful Google Photos redesign
While not a major overhaul of the Google Photos Android app, this update could bring much-needed filters and import tools to the smartphone experience, if it's ever rolled out on a large scale.
The new library tabs should make it faster to filter your snapshots based on where they're stored, rather than the traditional "favorites" path. This could be especially useful if you use Google Photos' "Backup and Sync" feature to store copies of your phone's snapshots in the cloud.
It's also good to see that Google Photos offers more options for importing photos from within the app itself, although some of them already exist in various menus. It's a bit of a hassle these days to transfer snaps from iCloud, so being able to add them to your library from the Google Photos app might prove popular.
What is not yet clear is when (or if) these updates, which are currently in the testing phase, will be rolled out to more users. Not all features tested in the beta make it to the final app, but hopefully they'll make it to Android soon and (much later, no doubt) to iOS.