Google Photos is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, the app has a very nice gift planned for its users. Let's see what the Mountain View company has prepared for us.
Google is known for regularly abandoning several of its apps, just like that, all at once. At the same time, some survive the years to eventually reach a respectable age. A good example is Google Photos, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on May 28, 2025. It has since become the go-to app for many photo enthusiasts on Android, and even iOS. And if 1.5 billion people around the world use it every month, it's because the service has evolved to become much more than a simple gallery.
The Mountain View firm has made it a collection of powerful editing tools, while improving its cloud storage system. For the occasion, Google released a blog post listing 10 tips for Google Photos. But you'll be most interested in this announcement: features exclusive to the Pixel 9 will be making their way to other Android smartphones. As the icing on the cake, a new design for the editor will also be part of the mix. Let's see what to expect.
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Google Photos has prepared a surprise for its users
Let's start with the new photo editing interface, visible in the screenshot below. The icons have been redesigned to adapt to the Material 3 Expressive, which we'll see in Android 16. Beyond the aesthetic aspect, what's changing is what happens when you tap Edit. Now, instead of seeing generic editing suggestions, the AI will suggest the ones it thinks are best suited to the open photo. To see them, you have to tap AI Enhancement.
Two Google Photos features previously reserved for the Pixel 9 are making their appearance on other Android smartphones. First, Auto Crop. Contrary to what its name suggests, it does much more than straighten your photo. Thanks to AI, the option is able to generate content based on the shot to expand it, similar to the generative fill function in Photoshop.
Then comes what is called Reimagine. Based once again on artificial intelligence, this allows localized retouching based on a text query. For example, you select the gray sky in your photo, the dialog box opens and you write “blue with some clouds”. Of course, the quality of the results of the two tools will depend on the complexity of the request and the area to be treated. In the example below, we can see in the bottom right corner that the AI fill left an empty area on the person's coat.
The latest new feature to look forward to will make it easier to share your albums on Google Photos. Currently, you can send a sharing link by adding the email address of the person concerned, or generate this link and send it by the means of your choice. In addition to these two possibilities, you can share albums via QR Code. Ideal when you are with people to whom you want to give access to the photos.
Now all that's left is to wait for all these features to appear in your Google Photos app on Android. They'll start rolling out next month (June 2025), although Google hasn't said how long it will take in total. If you're on iOS, the wait will be even longer, with a vague "later this year" being the answer.
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