Google Photos sharing feature has drastically improved

Every now and then, there is an update that fundamentally changes the way you use an app or piece of software without taking away from its core functionality. Google Photos has always been an app that we recommend everyone use on their devices to store and organize photos and it does that core function better than any other app in this space. However, the sharing feature has been a hot mess for a while! But you might have noticed an update to the app back in December and it has made sharing and commenting on photos drastically better than what it was before.

So what exactly has been updated? Well, if you have ever shared photos before, you will know it was not easy to share an individual photo with another user. You were forced to create an album for that single share and, after a while, your sharing tab was chock full of albums. On top of that, some of those albums were probably sent to the same person, so it was a nightmare to find shared photos and nearly impossible to have any sort of ongoing conversation. Now you can share photos and videos in what amounts to a private conversation/chat and it is a much more intuitive and simpler experience.

For me, the updated sharing feature feels and looks more like a conversation that you might have on social media and that makes sense as so many of us communicate with photos now. The new layout posts photos in the thread with the sender’s avatar next to it and comments are interspersed chronologically. This new layout makes it much easier to follow along and keep up with a conversation, especially when it is a group thread.

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You can also ‘like’ photos and those likes are attached to the photos as you would expect. Keep in mind that those likes show up in the thread chronologically, so if you are late to chime in on a cute picture of your niece, everyone will know.

Google says this isn’t designed to replace the chat apps you already use but I think this update makes Google Photos perfect for any personal photos you want to share with family and close friends. The big win for Google Photos is that you can share photos without any loss in quality from the photos you have backed up so, in most cases, this means your shared photos are print-ready. Google recognizes this advantage and has even started offering same-day prints. Now the family photos you send to your parents won’t be pixelated and blurry when they are hanging up on the fridge.

Source: The Keyword