Google today issued a minor refresh to its native Photos app on the App Store, introducing 3D Touch shortcuts for the Home screen and a much-needed new feature designed to optimize storage space on your device. Bumped to version 1.13, Google Photos for iPhone and iPad produces a 3D Touch menu upon pressing its Home screen icon, giving you access to the following shortcuts: I’m Feeling Lucky, Free Up Space and Make Shared Album.
In addition to these 3D Touch shortcuts and the new storage-optimization feature, this edition of the app packs in unspecified performance improvements.
3D Touch shortcuts
Aside from Home screen shortcuts with 3D Touch, the app has yet to introduce Peek and Pop gestures for previewing items within the app. The I’m Feeling Lucky shortcut, in case you’ve been wondering, will pull up some random shots from your library for those times you wish to be surprised. By the way, the same 3D Touch shortcut is also available for Google’s native search app on iOS.
The Free Up Space option takes you to the new storage-optimization feature and the Make Shared Album item is self-explanatory and needs no special introduction.
Storage management
As I mentioned earlier, now you can free up your device’s storage space that’s currently occupied by your photo and video originals. To get started with this feature, first access the app’s settings menu.
Now tap Manage Device Storage, then hit the Free Up Space button and follow the onscreen instructions. According to the feature’s description, this will remove original full-resolution photos and videos from your device that are already backed up to Google.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEK37MBTUPk
Oh, and don’t forget to really wipe those deleted photos and videos from your device by manually emptying the Recently Deleted album within Apple’s stock Photos app.