Google is testing a new Google Photos feature that could radically alter the appearance of the photo ... [+]
Google is trialing a new feature in Google Photos that could significantly change how users view and manage their growing photo libraries.
The new “Photo Stacks” feature, currently lying dormant within the latest version (6.60) of the Google Photos app, was previously hinted at in an earlier leak from the prolific leaker AssembleDebug, who has now successfully enabled the feature allowing us to see it in action.
As the video above reveals, enabling Photo Stacks enables “similar” photos to be automatically grouped into stacks, each taking up only one “slot” in your Library’s timeline view. One picture in each stack can be nominated as “top pick” and will become the cover image for the whole stack.
Google Photos already performs a similar type of stacking when you take a burst of pictures in rapid succession. In this case, the resulting photos are consolidated under a single thumbnail that can later be opened to reveal the rest of the photos in the burst.
The key difference with the new photo stacks feature is that the individual photos don’t need to have been shot in rapid succession; they just need to be taken at roughly the same time and similar enough in content for the app to deem them worth grouping together.
Combining similar pictures in this way makes the library quicker to navigate, as you can avoid swiping through multiple versions of the same shot when scrolling through the timeline.
A toggle switch enables the unreleased "Stack similar photos" feature in Google Photos.
This change would bring much-needed advantages for some. For example, suppose you’re the kind of person who tends to make several attempts at getting that perfect selfie or group shot. In that case, having all the different versions under a single thumbnail will significantly declutter your Library grid.
Opening up a photo stack reveals options to create an animation, manage your stack settings, or unstack the photos and return them to your grid as individual pictures. Opening up an individual photo from a stack presents the user with some new options, including the ability to set the image as top pick, remove it from the stack, or delete all other photos from the stack.
As an unreleased feature, there’s no official word of when it may become available to users, if at all—however, Google’s continued development of the feature points to an imminent release.
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