Google Photos update sneaks in tools to better manage burst photos, track image locations

21.03.2016
Google Photos is about way more than just backing up your images. The latest update tucks in some code that shows Google has in mind many ways to make your photo album more informative and interactive.

According to an APK teardown by Android Police, there’s a future enhancement coming for burst images. Right now the options for saving these for later are limited to “smart burst,” which saves the best shot of the bunch, or a curation of individual photos taken at about the same time. 

The story behind the story: Google Photos is an excellent app for keeping, organizing, and sharing photos. There are several tricks to explore, such as ways to hide photos from the past you’d rather not see and some new navigation schemes. It’s a big piece of Google’s strategy to serve as the safeguard for all your digital information, and it only looks to be taking on a more expansive role.

The Google Photos team appears to be working on something called “Burst Actionsheet” that could give you more control over which ones to save and how to cull others you’d rather get rid of. 

If turns out to be the case, it could encourage people to use burst mode more often and share such images across their networks. Since the code is there it may come in a future update, but it’s hard to know exactly when.

Additionally, code strings suggest some type of commenting feature on individual photos. It’s unclear if this would attach to Google+ or give you the ability to comment on pictures shared to others in your network of families and friends. 

Finally, there’s something called “Enrichment.” It looks like some way to automate sorting based on location and other factors. While albums already does this, the code indicates there a method to add in maps and locations to add more detail to a vacation album. There’s not much else to go on besides this, so we’ll look for more in the next update.

Officially the new version of Google Photos just brings bug fixes, which makes it worth grabbing on its own. You can get version 1.16 from APK Mirror or the Google Play Store.

(www.greenbot.com)

Derek Walter