A powerful new feature is coming to Google Photos that could provide a safer, more private alternative to social media updates. First spotted back in February, the unreleased feature, called “My Week,” is a group photo journal that helps close friends and family keep in touch by sharing regular photos and videos on a weekly basis.

Thanks to a new report from prominent app investigator Assemble Debug, who has been able to enable the feature, we now have a first look at My Week in action and a deeper insight into how it will work.

Touted as a “weekly photo journal for you and a few special people you choose,” My Week is promoted as a friendlier, more private way to share personal updates without the pressure to follow viral trends or grow an online following.

As the report reveals, a setup process guides you through selecting a few recent photos and inviting “only your closest people” to follow you. Your selected people will then see your weekly memories prominently displayed in the Photos tab of the Google Photos app alongside Google’s automatically generated content.

While My Week is hardly a new concept, most social media platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, now offer some form of “stories” feature. However, My Week will allow users to share updates away from some of the potentially toxic elements of these algorithmically driven platforms.

Given that My Week has now been enabled and seen in action, we can expect the feature to roll out very soon—although, as always with unreleased features, there’s no guarantee of it. Look for a new “Introducing My Week” tile in the memories carousel at the top of the Photos tab.

From Google’s perspective, My Week will undoubtedly increase sharing and help draw new users to Google Photos as the platform faces increased competition from a newly redesigned Apple Photos app coming in iOS 18.

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