Google Photos is the most popular photo storage solution. Not just limited to Android’s market share, but Google Photos is technically the most convenient and easy to use option for most of the users.
You can easily sync your photos automatically with unlimited storage for high-quality photos (till June 1st, 2021). Of course, when Google’s new policy comes in to effect, any photo or video you upload will be count against the free 15 GB data. If you exceed that, you need to subscribe to Google One plans based on your requirements.
Now that you know about the important information, let us take a look at several tips, tricks and learn how to efficiently master Google Photos.
Top Tips & Tricks To Use Google Photos
We’ll start with some common tips to help you Google Photos and then some tricks to master it.
1. Upload your Photos Automatically
Most of you must be already aware of the option to upload your camera photos to Google Photos automatically. But, in case you haven’t enabled that, here is how you can do it as shown in the screenshot above:
- Launch Google Photos
- Tap on the profile icon
- Click on “Turn on backup“
In either case, you can head to the Google Photos settings and then click on “Backup and sync” to turn it on. By default, your camera pictures and the ones you download should be synced. But, you can choose specific folders to sync, so you do not miss any media from your device or unnecessarily upload stuff that you don’t need backed up.
Fret not, the next tip will help you with that.
2. Choose Specific Folders to back up
You probably do not need everything to be backed up. But, if you want some specific folders to be looked for and the photos synced with Google Photos, you can certainly do that.
Here’s how:
- Go the Google Photos settings.
- Click on “Backup and sync“
- Scroll down and look for “Back up device folders“, tap on it and select the folders you want to be synced. That’s it!
3. Free up Storage space on your Smartphone
Once you have synced all your important photos and videos to Google Photos, you can remove them from your device to free storage space. To do that, you just need to tap on the profile icon (as mentioned in the first tip) and then click on “Free up X GB” option on your device.
4. Make use of the powerful search functionality
It is incredibly easy to look for photos using the search function. For instance, when I want to look for pictures of all my cats, I just need to type in “Cats” and it filters out only the photos with Cats in it.
You can also search for places, dates, background information, and some random texts to surprise yourself with an old photo that you never expected to come up. Feel free to get creative and explore what you already have in Google Photos.
5. Search for photos using Faces
Google’s known for some incredible AI work that helps recognize the faces to help you search. And, you can make use of that to easily find what you are looking for. As you can see in the screenshot below, you just head to the “Search” bar, click on it, and then it should give you some face recommendations to go through.
You can also expand the face recommendations using the arrow button that you see above.
6. Move photos to Archive to organize your stuff better
You can archive some photos that you want separated from your overall collection of photos. Do note that archiving does not mean deleting. You simply hide the photos from the photos view, and also they will not be used for making slideshows.
To do that, you just need to select a photo (or multiple), then from the options (three dots), click on “Move to Archive“. If you are on a desktop, you can simply press Shift + A to archive the photos.
7. Edit your Photos & Screenshots
With Google Photos on your device, you probably do not need any other photo editor. It offers a free editor where you get to apply filters, crop the photo, adjust the saturation, add annotations, and a few more things.
So, you do not need to keep another app installed just for minor photo edits. Even if you are not syncing photos with Google Photos, you can easily utilize the editor to make impressive changes.
You just need to click on the photo to view it and click on the edit icon (
) to get started. It’s the same for both phones and desktop. However, when you take a screenshot on your phone, you will immediately get an option to edit from the notification bar.
8. Explore Utilities Offered
Not just limited to storage and search, you can also create movies, collage, animation, and find other important options through Utilities in Google Photos. As shown in the screenshot above, you should be able to find it on both desktop and mobile.
On mobile, you need to click on “Library” to find the option as shown in the screenshot below.
Wrapping Up
As you noticed above, it is incredibly easy to master Google Photos and use it to its fullest extent. Most of the non-tech savvy users are not usually aware of all the important and basic options that can help them use Google Photos much more efficiently.
Hope this article helps you brush up some of the tips that you already know and some that you did not know.
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