Google Photos for Android is set to receive backup status indicators right in the gallery view. The app is also adding support for Android Foldables ahead of next week’s Samsung Galaxy Fold launch. Google Photos now shows indicators on images and videos that haven’t been backed up yet, making it easy for users to see what needs to be uploaded.
The “What’s new” section of the Play Store for Google Photos was recently updated to note these two new additions.
“We’ve launched a new gallery view to help you see which of your photos and videos have not yet been backed up and proactively choose items to backup. Additionally we’ve introduced several improvements to make Google Photos compatible with foldable devices.”
An upcoming gallery view in Photos should let you see which media items haven’t been backed up, and manually choose the ones you want to upload. That’s all we really wanted, isn’t it? It’s a necessary feature for users who don’t have automatic backup enabled and can never tell what’s uploaded and what isn’t or those who get stuck with a mysterious “30 items uploading” for days on end with no clue as to which item is stalling the process.
The option isn’t live yet — at least we weren’t able to trigger it in any way on our devices — but the Photos team did update the Play Store changelog to mention it. This isn’t the first time the Photos team has put up a changelog before a feature’s rollout though; it recently happened with the suggested document crop that doesn’t seem to be live yet, and many times before that.
Google did not detail the support in Photos, but it likely involves screen continuity and multi-resume. The former allows apps to automatically transition from one screen to another with respect to the new layout and density, while the latter lets multiple apps remain active.
Version 4.14 of Google Photos widely rolled out last week, though the release notes could be referring to a new update introduced on Thursday as the backup status indicators are not yet live.