Google Photos bringing Favorites and Hearts

Google Photos hero imageGoogle yesterday updated its excellent Photos app for iPhone and iPad with the ability to favorite your photos, as well as “heart” images that have been shared with you.

Favorite your photos

You can now mark any image in Google Photos as your favorite.

To do so, you just hit a brand new orange star icon in the corner in order to mark the currently viewed photo as your favorite. The favorited photo is automatically added to the built-in “Favorites” album so feel free to head to the Albums tab to view all your favorites in one place.

Apple’s Photos app for iOS and macOS has included this feature from its inception.

According to the search monster, Favorite on Google Photos is rolling out this week.

“Heart” your shared albums

This feature is like Favorites, but limited to shared images.

You’ll be permitted to mark any photo a friend just shared with you using a new heart option. Simply tap the new heart icon when viewing a shared album or photo to “heart” shared content.

That one is “coming soon,” Google said.

Other updates

Back at I/O 2018, Google talked about some pretty cool capabilities for the Photos app that take full advantage of its machine learning hardware and software and artificial intelligence.

Check them out quickly in a Google I/O video segment included below.

Specifically, you can now use one-tap suggested actions to brighten, archive, share or rotate your photos. The app will even change black-and-white shots into color and remove background colors from an image while keeping your subject perfectly intact.

Google Photos suggested actions animation

And thanks to an API, Google Photos will soon work with your favorite apps and devices.

Oh, and Google 1!

The Internet giant recently unveiled a new Google 1 subscription that includes more affordable cloud storage compared to Google Drive with family sharing.

The available subscriptions come with a few additional perks, such as live 24/7 customer service for all of Google’s consumer products and services by phone, chat or email, Google Play credits and discounts on hotels found through Google Search.

The restructured cloud-storage tiers include a new $2.99 per month option with 200 GB of storage, the removal of the $9.99 per month 1 TB plan and reducing the price of the previously-pried $19.99 per month 2 TB tier to just $9.99 per month.

Here are all the Google 1 plans:

  • 15 GB: Free
  • 100 GB: $1.99 per month
  • 200 GB: $2.99 per month
  • 2 TB: $9.99 per month

The firm will upgrade existing 1 TB Drive plans to the new 2 TB one at no extra cost.

Google Photos for iOS is a free download from App Store.