Quickly Categorize Your Memories with Google Photos Collections Feature

Google is tidying up how photos, albums, and tools are organized and presented in the Google Photos app. Collections view is a new tab in the Photos app that keeps your albums in one place. The layout changes are meant to help you find your photos and albums faster.

Before this update, the Library tabs featured a few shortcuts on the top and on-device private albums. To access shared albums, you had to tap the small share button on top of the app and scroll through the carousel to find shared albums. For the AI curated albums of people, pets, places and documents, you had to open the search tab and horizontally scroll through the thumbnails.

That’s all gone now and in its place, you’ll find Collections (with the same icon). Every album—private, shared, or intelligently sorted by Google Photos—is accessible through Collections. You can filter by private or shared to quickly locate an album. The search is also less cluttered and more streamlined.

The Verge

The Locked Folder has been moved from the top of the page. You can now scroll all the way down on the Collections tab to find it. There are dedicated tabs for “People & Pets,” documents, and places. Google also added two dynamic tiles next to the Trash and Favorites buttons. They show albums based on what you view more often. So if you open screenshots often, it might turn into the screenshots shortcut. Google is making these changes based on customer complaints. “We’ve heard you loud and clear that with the previous experience, finding shared albums was difficult,” Google reassured users.

The Utilities tab is gone too. Google has spread the tools across the interface. For example, the Photo Frames and Free Up Storage tools have been moved to account settings. Importing and creating media files works though the plus icon on top of the screen. The update is already rolling out to Android and iOS devices. If your Google Photos still has the Library tab, you might have to wait a few weeks until the update reaches you.

Source: Google via The Verge