Google has made further enhancements to its forthcoming “Tinder-style” curation upgrade for Google Photos.
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Key Takeaways
- Google Photos is testing a “swipe” feature, making it faster and more intuitive to tidy up your photo collection.
- Inspired by Tinder, the new swipe feature lets you quickly decide which photos to keep and which to delete.
- Significant changes in the unreleased code hint at an imminent rollout of this experimental feature.
Swipe Right: Google’s Experimental Tinder-Style Feature Aids Speedy Photo Curation
Google Photos is testing a Tinder-style “swipe” feature that lets you quickly delete or keep photos to declutter your photo library.
Available to a limited number of users, recent refinements to the experimental feature suggest a wider rollout is planned. It currently appears automatically when the app detects the need for decluttering, presenting you with a sequence of images that you can swipe to the left to delete or swipe to the right to keep. Reminiscent of the popular dating app, Tinder, this gamified experience adds a little fun to the otherwise tedious process of cleaning out the trash. As multiple Reddit posts show, Google has been testing this feature for some time, with selected users having already received early versions as part of an apparent test. However, most users don’t yet appear to have access to it.
Recent updates, uncovered by Android Authority, reveal that Google is refining the feature to give users control over when it’s activated. The latest version is launched from a new “Clean up this day” chip shown while scrolling through the timeline, allowing users to proactively launch the swipe interface and declutter photos from a specific day. This enables users to curate their photo libraries according to their own schedule. The update also brings some practical interface refinements.
The tool guides you through the day’s photos one by one, prompting you to swipe left to delete the current image or swipe right to keep it. The app displays the number of swipes remaining to complete the process and, at the end, provides a summary where you can confirm your selections before any pictures are permanently deleted. When you’ve finished making your selections, you can tap the “Review and delete” button at the top right.
The most substantial change in this version is the ability to launch it whenever you want, rather than relying on the app to recommend a spring clean. This will make the tool genuinely useful rather than expecting users to deal with an unexpected and unfamiliar feature popping up out of the blue.
Google has also made other minor changes to the interface and graphics.
Like Tinder, the previous version of this feature displayed a heart icon whenever you swiped right to keep a photo. This icon has now been replaced with a tick, eliminating any confusion with the heart’s more familiar use as a “like.”
Google has also removed a previously existing running tally of how much storage you’ll get back by deleting your selected pictures. This change suggests a change in focus, repositioning the feature as a device for keeping your timeline tidy rather than as a storage management tool.
Swipe Left: Is Google Photos’ Tinder-style Tool Actually Useful?
While the feature’s eye-catching swipe animations and gamified design make photo curation more engaging, the tool is less effective in other scenarios, for example, when selecting which image to keep from a selection of very similar photos.
To do this effectively, the images need to be viewed together, not individually. You can’t decide which photo to keep until you’ve checked and compared all of the others, but the “swipe” interface forces you to decide immediately before moving on to the next picture.
Thankfully, Google is also experimenting with a feature that allows users to compare similar images more easily. You can read more about this feature in my previous article. Together, these features should help you keep your Google Photos library less cluttered and save you some money on Google One subscription fees.
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