Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Photos has long been able to recognize common faces in your pictures.
- The app may be changing how those faces are surfaced, adding them to the main photo view.
- Right now, you have to pull up image details before you can see identified faces.
Taking photos has got to be one of the biggest things we use our smartphones for, so of course companies like Google are paying a lot of attention to their photography apps. Right now, those Google devs seem to be on a bit of a spree, and we’ve been spotting a ton of work on upcoming Google Photos features, from new rotation options to improved support for working with multiple pics at once. That party’s not stopping now, and we’ve also uncovered progress on what appears to be a change to how the app displays the faces it’s recognized.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
One of the best features in Photos is its ability to recognize faces, letting us easily keep track of all the pics featuring our family and friends. You also have the option to further organize those into face groups. Normally, to get a look at the faces Photos identified in a pic, you’d swipe up from the bottom or hit the overflow menu to access photo details. But as we check out changes in the new Google Photos version 7.26 build, we’ve identified a new approach to displaying faces.
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
Rather than making you swipe through to check out faces, Photos may start displaying members of a face group right in its primary viewing interface — at least, with the new revision we’ve been tracking that includes that “Add to” button.
While we were able to surface this UI a little early, it’s clear that this is very much still a work in progress, and includes redundancies like also repeating these faces on the details screen. It’s possible Google may just want us to have multiple options there, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Photos clean that up if and when Google finally decides to move forward with the change.
Even with just a quick look at what Google’s planning, we have to say this feels like a positive change, and makes the idea of navigating through your library by way of the faces in your pictures that much more appealing. We’ll be sure to give you a heads up if we see any further progress of this change making its way towards going live.
