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Google’s Latest App Update allows Users to search Google Photos with a swipe

Google’s latest app update allows users to search Google Photos with a simple swipe up from the Android home screen.

If you’re lucky enough to use Android 12, you’ll have already noticed the new universal search feature that Google recently added to the app bundle. From here, you can search for almost anything, including settings, shortcuts, apps, and conversations.

Now, according to a report from 9to5Google, this search feature is being expanded to provide search results directly from Google Photos. On some devices, according to the report, a search for “screenshots” returns a carousel of screenshot thumbnails pulled from the Google Photos screenshot album. These can then be viewed or shared directly from the search results. By clicking on the “Photos” banner, you can directly access the album concerned in Google Photos.

Unfortunately, this feature appears to be limited to screenshots for now, but it paves the way for greater integration with Google Photos in the future.

It would be great to be able to search for a person and get results from contacts, conversations, and Google Photos all in one place, rather than having to load up Google Photos to do a separate search.

However, such an approach raises obvious confidentiality issues. Since any of your photos could appear on the screen (albeit as thumbnails), it would be unwise to use Universal Search when someone else has your phone. Hopefully Google adds a button to toggle Google Photos results on or off, as it has done for various other categories, although no such option currently exists for screenshots.

9to5Google testers found the new search feature on only one of four available devices running Android 13 developer preview 1. However, the same feature is available when running Android 12 on a Pixel 4. This suggests that the The feature is currently being tested and available only to a select group of users, but does not require Android 13, or the latest hardware, when it eventually rolls out to everyone.

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