Google Photos Has a New Way to View Your Memories

Remember scrapbooks? Maybe some of us still take them, but most of us keep our photos on our phones these days. There are many benefits to this, of course, but you lose some of the personal aspects of photo curation. Your important photos of friends and family are mixed with screenshots of coupons and web pages, and ingenious images of your router’s password. (Only me?)

The solution to this problem from photo app makers like Apple and Google is “memories.” You know the memories: they appear in the photo app of your choice as automatically selected collections of images and videos based on a certain parameter. Perhaps your app creates a memory based on your trip, a particular season, or photos of pets you have in your library. It’s a useful way to relive valuable photos and videos without going through the entire library yourself.

Google, like them, is building on this concept : The Google Photos app now has a dedicated Memories view that’s easy to access from the bottom row of the app. This new Memories view is now on the timeline, so you can scroll through different collections of images from your travels, work, and life. Of course, like everything these days, these memories are created by AI (as they used to be), but you also have the ability to create your own, as well as edit the AI-created memories that appear.

One feature currently being tested is AI-generated names. If you want, you can ask Google’s AI to come up with a name for a specific memory based on the context of the photos and videos. If your account is participating in the test, a “Help Me Name” button will appear next to the new memory. If the memory is related to a trip to Joshua Tree, for example, Google Photos might suggest titles such as Desert Adventure 🌵, Joshua Tree 2021, or Desert Exploration with Ellie 🏜️.

What I think could be a game changer is Google’s new collaboration with Memories. You can click the “Share” button to invite friends and family to the memory, where they can also add their own photos and videos. This makes a lot of sense: other people always have their own images of events that we’ve never seen. Whether you’re traveling with friends or attending your family’s birthday party, you can invite others to add images you might otherwise have missed.

Google is also working on the ability to share memories as a video, but does not offer a timeline for this feature. However, this new Memories view is rolling out starting Tuesday, August 15 across all Google Photos apps in the US. You may not see him right away, but he shouldn’t be too far behind.