As promised, the Internet giant Google today pushed an update to its Photos for iPhone and iPad app in the App Store. Bumped to version 1.4, the software has gained some of the features Google promised to enable before the end of this year. For starters, you can now label people in photos and merge face groups so they’re easier to search.
People labeling
No one but you can see your those private labels, by the way.
You can mark people in photos by what you call them, name or nickname. This new feature is in addition to the app’s auto-tagging features and allows you to really zero in on specific images of people with things, places or other people.
People labeling is currently available in the United States so you might want to adjust your iPhone’s region options in Settings → General → Language & Region → Region to United States in order to gain access to this handy feature.
Other tidbits
In addition to people labeling, Google Photos now supports direct animation sharing to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. On top of that, you should notice faster app startup due to iOS 9-specific performance improvements.
Google Photos now features Chromecast support so you can cast photos and videos to a big screen TV with Chromecast hardware. According to Google, shared albums are coming to the iOS app later this year.
This feature will gather all your photos and videos with friends and family in one spot, and you’ll receive notifications when someone adds new photos to a shared album.
Google Photos 1.4 changelog
The following new features and enhancements are available in Google Photos:
- More people features: In Search, you can now label and merge face groups.
- Improved animation sharing: Your animations can now be shared directly to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
- Faster app startup.
- Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Availability
A 63.4-megabyte download, 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.