Following its announcement that it will be shutting down the Picasa desktop app and the Picasa Web Albums online photo-sharing service, Google is doubling down on its mobile Photos app for iOS and Android.
Last night, the Google Photos app was updated in the App Store to support Apple’s Live Photos format. In Google Photos 1.8 for iOS, you can now back up your Live Photos to the Google cloud, as well as view them within the app.
“Back up your Live Photos and view them on any iOS device, including your iPad and previous generation iPhone,” writes Google.
On the web, users can download Live Photos in a photo & video bundle.
In addition, the app sports improved navigation with a brand new bottom bar for moving between different views. Your Collections have been renamed to Albums and the all-new Albums view with a scrolling carousel makes it easier than before to access your shared albums, people, places, things, videos, collages, animations and movies.
Additionally, the app now supports Split View and Slide Over multitasking modes on compatible iPads, takes full advantage of the iPad Pro’s 12.9-inch screen and uses iOS’s smart cache management to help reduce cache usage when your device is low on space.
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Availability
Google Photos requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 8.1 or later.
The app is localized in English, Arabic, Bokmål, Norwegian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.