Google Photos: New ‘power search’ hugely improves app experience | Digit

Be it on your smartphone or on the web, one of the most useful tools from Google is Google Photos. It is very convenient to get all your photos there, arranged in different formats and also the best part is the editing feature.

In the recent past Google Photos has received updates like hiding pictures and setting up a locked folder, searching images using the text present in photos and so on. Everytime there is an update for Google Photos, you know that something new is on its way. 

And recently, eagle-eyed users have been noticing something new on th eir Google Photos screen. It is a blue text bubble right below the search bar and it is present only when you open Google Photos on the web. This new update is said to be a more powerful search bar or a power search bar for enhanced search through your photos in the cloud. Let’s look into how Google Photos’ power search is going to work.

Google Photos power search feature explained

The power search feature will now allow users to search for photos with more complex phrases and ideas. Some ideas that have been tested were: ‘peaceful garden,’ ‘colourful sunset,’ ‘Cinderella,’ etc. 

Also, if you have previously tagged faces in Google Photos, then you can use them with a scenario to find the certain picture that you are looking for. For eg: ‘Sreya at a trek,’ would show the picture of the person whose face you have tagged with the name and her picture that was clicked on a trek. This is how the Google Photos power search feature works.

Also when you search for a complex phrase, Google Photos will show you the “Most relevant to your search” section. This section sorts out pictures according to the description and shows a series of such pictures in the order of relevance. One thing to note is that, picture doesn’t appear based on the date in this scenario.

This power search feature is only applicable on the web as of now, not in the Google Photos smartphone app. A Google spokesperson has informed that they are just taking this idea as an “experiment.” If this goes well and is a hit amongst the users, then Google may include it as an update for the phone app as well in the future.

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