Google is testing a new Google Photos feature that will make it considerably easier to avoid being reminded of people you’d rather not see, without being forced to delete any of your pictures.
The popular Memories feature of Google Photos helps bring your photo library to life by frequently surfacing images and videos from key life events, friends and family. However, sometimes, we’d rather not be reminded of specific people or relationships, perhaps temporarily. Google Photos already allows you to do this using the Hide Faces From Memories function. However, an overhaul of this feature is very much needed as the option is tucked away in several layers deep in the app settings, meaning several steps are required to access it.
Now, a recent discovery from Assemble Debug, via Android Authority, reveals an unreleased update hidden in the code of the latest Google Photos Android app that should make the process much more intuitive and easier to manage.
According to the report, users will soon be able to access a new menu that becomes available after swiping upwards on any photo. Doing so reveals thumbnails of any people recognized within a picture, and tapping on the three dots icon next to one of these thumbnails opens a menu from where users can select “Hide face from memories.” This menu also provides the option to edit the “face label” (name) or change the cover photo (thumbnail image) for that person.
The ability to remove individuals from automatically generated Memories is especially useful because it allows you to avoid unwanted reminders without actually having to delete any pictures from your library. You can still search for hidden faces as normal; they just won’t show up in your Memories unprompted.
As always, with these unreleased functions, there’s no guarantee that the feature will roll out to users in its current form. In fact, this current update refines a previously leaked version of the same feature that didn’t make it out of the testing phase, presumably because Google wanted to improve the customer experience before release. This previous version revealed a page presenting all currently hidden faces, so you can easily unhide them as required. I expect a similar feature to appear when the new functionality eventually rolls out.
How To Hide Faces From Memories Now
As mentioned above, it is already possible to prevent selected individuals from appearing in Google Photos Memories. To do so, tap on:
Photos Settings > Preferences > Memories > Hide people and pets
This will bring up a page of named faces, which you can tap to hide or tap again to restore. The interface is certainly in need of improvement, as there’s no obvious order to the faces and no easy way to find who has been hidden without scrolling through potentially thousands of people.
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