Newly found code in Google Photos suggests the platform will soon introduce a weekly photo highlight reel known as My Week that can be shared with contacts.
Evidence of the upcoming feature was discovered by tech blog TheSpAndroid after diving deep into the files of Google Photos version 6.69. There, they discovered strings with text descriptions explaining how the update could work. According to their findings, users will be able to select multiple pictures to make up a My Week highlight reel. They can then invite contacts to their account so they enjoy recently taken images.
TheSpAndroid explains this is similar to how regular albums currently work on Google Photos. However, My Week differentiates itself by being on the homepage. Invitees won’t have to dig through multiple folders to find the source. Android Authority, which also discovered the same strings of code, corroborates this opinion. They believe My Week will allow contacts to stay “up-to-date with your life” by automatically sending photographs every week. Users can pick out what they want to send to their contacts.
There is some debate on how exactly the highlight reels will be shown. TheSpAndroid admits it's not sure whether images will be in a "memories carousel" (think Instagram Stories) or in a separate Memories tab.
Collecting photos in real-time
In addition to My Week, TheSpAndroid found evidence of another feature called real-time albums.
The string of code suggests Google Photos will recommend placing images taken at an event or trip into one of these albums while you're still traveling. That way, you won’t have to remember to do it after the event is over. It'll save you a lot of time and hassle. The report states once an event is over you can tell the platform to stop uploading to a real-time album, implying Google Photos will collect images automatically.
Do take the information here with a grain of salt. As Android Authority points out, “there’s no guarantee” that any of these features will see the light of day. It just means that Google is working on something. It is possible to enable the flags corresponding to MyWeek and the real-time albums, but they won’t do anything.
The tech giant has been working on improving organization tools on Google Photos. Who among us does not have an unruly mess in our accounts? Very recently, the company rolled out Photo Stacks giving the platform the ability to automatically group pictures into alike groups. Back several months ago, a new creation tool was added to tie together clips into a minute-long highlight video. My Week seems to be the next step in Google’s photo organization endeavors.
While we're on the topic of photography, check out TechRadar's round of the best camera phones for 2024.
