Suggested Sharing and Shared Libraries Come to Google Photos

At Google I/O back in May, the search giant announced several exciting new features for Google Photos. Two of the most eagerly-awaited, suggested sharing and shared libraries, are now available.

“To help you share and receive more of the meaningful moments in your life, we’re rolling out suggested sharing and shared libraries this week,” Google’s James Gallagher writes in a new post to the Google Photos Blog. “Suggested sharing uses machine learning to automatically identify photos and suggest recipients, making sharing as simple as a single tap. With shared libraries, sending and receiving photos with one person is effortless: You can automatically share your full photo library or customize just what you want to share.”

As noted, Google announced several important improvements to Google Photos at its I/O conferencelast month. Two of the more minor updates, photo book support and archiving, arrived in early June. But suggested sharing and shared libraries are major new features.

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I’m not seeing an app update on either Android or iPhone, but Google says it will happen this week. (I’m often several days behind an app update announcement for whatever reason.) I do see the update on the web version of Google Photos, fortunately.

But here’s what’s new.

Suggested sharing. A new Sharing tab in Google Photos displays sharing suggestions, photos shared with you, and photos that others have shared with you. If you do choose to share something, you can edit the recipients, and which photos to share, as you do so.

Shared libraries. Navigate to Menu -> Shared libraries and you can choose to share all or some of your library with others. For example, I used this feature to share my entire photo collection with my wife (and she did the same).

So far, so good. I can’t wait to get this on mobile.

 

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Conversation 5 comments

  • Mark from CO

    28 June, 2017 - 1:50 pm

    <p><br></p><p>Paul:</p><p>This is what Microsoft seems unable to understand. Deliver a product that might be over simplistic at first and keep updating it on a regular and timely basis. Before you know it, you have a product that is wonderful. But better yet,&nbsp;a product that keeps on getting better. Vision and persistence. Two virtues Microsoft needs to develop if it really wants to be in the consumer market.</p><p>Mark from CO</p>

  • MattHewitt

    Premium Member
    28 June, 2017 - 4:10 pm

    <p>Can't wait to try this out. Hoping Google Photos is ready for iOS 11 when it is released. It currently doesn't support uploading the High Efficiency Image File Format iPhone will use as the default in the future.</p>

  • Daekar

    28 June, 2017 - 4:44 pm

    <p>Been looking forward to shared libraries. It looks like they won't let you share with more than one person, though, which kind of defeats the purpose for me.</p><p>Really couldn't care less about suggested shares. I want to share what I want, not what they decide I should.</p>

  • dcdevito

    28 June, 2017 - 8:27 pm

    <p>Got this on my iPhone. </p>

  • the_real_entheos

    29 June, 2017 - 10:34 pm

    <p>This is a huge thing for my wife and I, as taking and sharing photos is probably the best use of my phone (learning world capitals in a game is probably the worst). Looks like Paul takes pictures of his golf clubs after he cleans them, like I do with my car after I wash it. Never heard him talk of golf on any of his podcasts.</p>

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