Summary

  • Google Photos for iOS now features a horizontal row of shortcuts for easier access to Favorites, Recently Added, and more.
  • The new row of shortcuts pushes down the grid of photos but offers quicker access to frequently used albums and Favorites.
  • Users can expect these changes to eventually make their way to the Android version of Google Photos, but there’s no timeline available right now.



There’s a lot to love about Google Photos, which has recently seen a handful of new features. This week alone, we’ve seen the Photos app for Android adding the Quick Edit feature, followed by a minor but significant update bringing more visibility to the album name while viewing an individual photo or video. The Google Photos team is now showing some love for the iOS version of the app with a new row of shortcuts at the top.

Google Photos

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Reporting by 9to5Google reveals the addition of a horizontal row of shortcuts — Favorites, Recently Added, the last viewed album, and Trash — on Google Photos for iOS (v7.11). Some of these shortcuts are already available at the top of the Collections tab. It’s unclear if this row of shortcuts will lead to the removal of the shortcuts from Collections, though such a move would make sense.


Expectedly, the shortcuts row pushes down the grid of photos further down the screen. But the reasoning here is that users are more likely to access the shortcuts on top rather than manually scrolling through the list of images and videos to find something. I’m not seeing the shortcuts row on the Google Photos app for iOS, so it’s likely part of a limited rollout at the moment.


This row of shortcuts should make it to Android eventually

Google Photos on Android (left); Google Photos on iOS with the top row of shortcuts (right)

This change is currently available on the iOS version of Google Photos, though it shouldn’t be long until it reaches Android. However, we can’t say how long that would take, given that Google Photos on Android still lags behind its iOS counterpart in some departments, such as with the bottom bar.


The Photos app on Android still has four bottom bar tabs, whereas the iOS version features a cleaner three-tab design since late November, facilitated by moving Memories into the Collections tab. Meanwhile, Google Photos also features an “Ask” tab at the bottom, which triggers the Gemini-powered Ask Photos experience (US only for now).

Google Photos users will appreciate the new shortcuts row as it gives them instant access to albums they open frequently. Moreover, the Favorites shortcut being just a tap away rather than within the Collections tab is also welcome news. We hope Google doesn’t take too long to roll out these changes to the Photos app on Android.