Category: Google Photos

The Google Photos app and service got a small tweak yesterday behind-the-scenes that will make heavy users of the app rejoice.  Now when you are viewing your albums in either the app or on the web, there is a new Slideshow feature on the overflow menu.  That feature allows you to start a slide show on your devices or, if you have a Chromecast, cast them to your TV.  It is a small addition but an important one as it is an often requested feature.

Full disclosure:  I’m a Google Top Contributor for Google Photos in the Product Forums.

The nice thing about this update is there is not app update required.  The most current version of the app on your phone or tablet will simply have the feature pushed to it.

Today marks the first birthday of Google Photos, the photo backup and sharing service-meets-app.  It was announced at Google I/O 2015 and was officially launched on May 27, 2015 as a website and an app for Android with iOS being added shortly thereafter.  In that year, the service has grown tremendously as have the functionality of the apps and the website.  Today, as part of the celebrations, Google has released some facts and figures on how the service is used and how much it has grown in popularity.  We knew of course that it had grown to over 200 million active monthly users based on comments from I/O this year.  But there are even more interesting figures to discuss.

One of the tidbits of news that came out of the Google I/O keynote yesterday was around Google Photos.  The app and service were launched last year at I/O and the growth has been nothing short of impressive.  In his keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the service is now seeing an impressive 200 million active users per month.  Perhaps even more impressive, users of the service had created 2 trillion labels.  Those labels help users find things faster in their photos.

Google has pushed out an exciting new feature for Google Photos:  Commenting on shared albums.  This has been a much requested feature of the photo service and the good news is it is coming to Android, iOS and Web all at the same time.  Now when you share an album, you can allow those you share with to add comments to those photos in the album.  It is a great way for friends and family to share their thoughts about the latest photos from your holiday or the kids.

Google Photos for Android has received a small but important update for Android devices.  The update, version 1.18 for those keeping score at home, adds the ability for you to back up photos on your device to your Google account online manually.  To this point, the Photos app has only allowed you to automatically backup photos in your camera or other folder but not force the issue with a manual override.  That, fortunately, has now changed.

For those who use Google Photos, the web-based version of the service has received two much needed improvements.  The first are keyboard shortcuts to commonly accessed features of the service.  This is a big deal as it pulls Photos inline with virtually all of the other Google web-based services when it comes to quick ways to access features to the service.  To see the new shortcuts, just type SHIFT+? on your Windows PC or Mac and you will get a pop-up that shows you the shortcuts available.