Google Photos Library tab redesign has been delayed, and it’ll change again before it arrives
Google announced an upcomingredesign to its Photos appback in March, but the upgrade never arrived on Android phones. The company has now confirmed to9to5Googlethat the update has been delayed, and there will be “some additional changes” before it rolls out. Google initially said that the update would be rolling out “in the next few weeks” after its March 22 announcement, but the feature never landed. We don’t know when it will now arrive or how it will change from what was initially revealed.
The update was set to redesign the Library tab significantly with a grid of albums greeting you as you enter that menu. It meant you would initially see your Favorites, the phone’s Camera roll, and then a variety of other albums. To dig into your photos, you would have been able to use various chips along the top of the grid to filter, including options such as On device or Shared albums.
The options for Favorites, Utilities, Archive, and Trash also moved to a list after the grid view in this tab, which made those a touch harder to find as they currently sit at the top of the Library view. It also introduced a new option in that list for importing physical and digital photos and videos into Google’s service. Tapping on that button would give you a page designed to help you transfer photos from digital cameras or other cloud-storage services.
It’s currently unclear what Google plans to change before it rolls out the update or when it’ll arrive. What happened here is also unclear, but Google may have heard user feedback and decided to change some things before it pushed the changes to Android phones. Weirdly, the update did begin to roll out to iPhone and iPad users, but it was then reverted later, so it’s not currently available.
As part of this announcement, a redesigned Sharing tab was also revealed. According to Google, this feature will continue to roll out over the “next couple of weeks” with an iOS update coming in the future. The changes include a Locked Folder as well as an easier to parse list of sections that begins with Partner sharing and is followed by shared albums, conversations, and links.
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