Google Photos serves as a photo-sharing App along with being a default gallery for many smartphones out there but soon, it could do more than just that and gain a new notification feed with likes, comments, and more. The addition of such a feature would make it more like a social networking platform than just a gallery app, giving it capabilities close to what Instagram had back in the day when it was just a photo-sharing app and not the home to reels.
Spotted by Android Authority via an APK teardown, Google could be working on a new notification feed for the Google Photos app along with a new and helpful UI tweak for easily gaining back lost storage. The publication enabled these features in version 6.85.0.637477501 of the Google Photos app for Android.
As per the evidence found, Google Photos could replace the current sharing icon (which appears next to your profile picture) with a notification icon. Tapping on this new icon opens a “Sharing Activity” user interface, which is the publication is calling a social notification feed. This page will show users the likes and comments for their albums while also alerting them when someone adds photos to their album. It is a nifty feature Instagram doesn’t offer as of now but at the same time, it does show notifications when someone likes or comments on a user’s photo.
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Lines of code seen in the APK teardown suggest that this new page in Google Photos could also notify the users when they’ve been added to a group, along with the name of the person who added them. The current “Shared links” page will still exist alongside the new social notification feed, accessible via the ellipsis icon in the top-right corner as shown in a video posted by the news outlet.
Google seems to be focusing on the social aspects of Google Photos in a future version of the app. Although Google Photos still far from being what Instagram is today, Google Photos seems to be evolving into what Instagram was in its early days and what some users still want: a simple photo-sharing app.
Aside from the notifications feed, Google Photos could introduce a new meter of sorts to help you gain back the storage that may be occupied by unneeded photos. This meter will appear when you tap a category (e.g. screenshots, blurry photos) in the “review and delete” section of the manage storage page. It shows how much storage you can free up by taking all of the suggested actions under “review and delete.”