Google Photosmay have tons of smart features, but its incredibly capable search tool comes in handy the most in our daily use. Its AI prowess allows it to pull up your old photos and videos just by typing what’s in them — you can find your photos by the people in them, the location they’re taken at, andeven by date. The search in Google Photos is already pretty powerful, but the company is looking to make it even better with support for more complex queries.
In its current form, Google Photos’ search tool can handle simple inputs, like the name of the tagged person, locations, pets, objects, or the setting (beach, lakes, etc.). But with recent enhancements, Google is making searches more granular and specific, allowing you to find the exact photo that matches your more detailed description.
TheGoogle Photos websitehas lately been showing some users a new pop-up about the more powerful search feature, according to9to5Google. If you have it already, you may punch in a longer search query with more details for Photos to find the closest match, like a “colorful sunset” in the example screenshot below.
Google Photos will bring up the photo that matches your description and highlight it at the top, sorting the results by relevance and not by date. The outlet notes that you can even search for people within a particular setting (e.g. someone at the beach), and the app will show you those specific photos first. This update to search should make it faster to comb through your media, especially if you have collected thousands of photos and videos over the years.
In a statement to 9to5Google, the company called this search feature an experiment, which could be the reason why it isn’t available more widely just yet. Google is perhaps running a limited test with a handful of users and may take a few weeks to roll out the new search to everyone. Even those who already have the feature can use it only on the web and not on the Google Photos app. But we’ll keep an eye out as we await a wider release of these handy improvements to the search.
