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Searching through your Google Photos library may get a lot easier soon

OnePlus Open showing Google Photos on cover display.
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

Google Photos is continuing to refine its search and sorting features to make old photos easier to find. According to an APK teardown from Android Authority, Google is introducing new search filters to help you search your library for the most recent photos related to a search keyword or ones that closely match a keyword.

The filters seem to consist of two new types: Most Recent and Best Match. The Most Recent filter sorts things chronologically, with the most recent photos appearing at the top. The Best Match filter will bring up the photos that most closely match the search keyword. To some extent, Google Photos does this already, but the outcome can be hit-or-miss.

As an example, Android Authority points out that if you search “flower” in Google Photos currently, it won’t bring up very relevant results and will often pull up photos without any flowers in their frames. With the new Best Match filter, the app will only bring up photos with a flower in the frame. That’s certainly handy if you’re trying to find a specific photo that you want to share.

Google is also working to introduce a way to display scrollable albums in search results. None of these features are live currently, but they’re likely to arrive in a future update, though we don’t have a confirmed timeline yet.

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While Samsung’s Android 15 update is indefinitely delayed, and Google is still focusing on patches for Android 14, the good news is that this is an app update, so if there’s an APK teardown in the wild, the rollout is likely imminent.

Ajay Kumar
Freelance Writer, Mobile
Ajay has worked in tech journalism for more than a decade as a reporter, analyst, and editor.
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