Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Photos may soon offer suggestions to help users clean up storage by deleting unnecessary photos.
- These suggestions will appear after users delete multiple photos.
- The feature will likely be optional, and the app could receive a corresponding setting to turn it off.
Google Photos already offers a convenient way for users to free up storage space on their devices through the “Manage storage” option. It lists photos and videos with large file sizes, blurry images, and screenshots that can be easily selected and deleted with a few taps. However, the app could soon offer a smarter solution.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
We’ve found evidence of an upcoming feature in the latest Google Photos release (version 7.35) that could automatically suggest photos users may want to delete. Code related to the feature reveals that the app will offer these suggestions after users manually select and delete several photos.
Code
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_banner_subtitle">We found some photos you might want to delete</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_banner_title">Clean up your library</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_first_run_promo_subtitle">Try a new deleting experience whenever you select and delete %1$d or more photos</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_more_photos_to_delete">We found more photos you might want to delete</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_review">Review</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_review_suggestions">Review suggestions</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_turn_off_suggestions_toast_button">Turn off suggestions</string>
<string name="photos_trash_assisteddeletion_turn_off_suggestions_toast_description">Delete suggestions appear whenever you select and delete %1$d or more photos</string>Once the feature rolls out, Google Photos will highlight the new capability with a banner the first time users select and delete multiple photos. The banner will read: “Try a new deleting experience whenever you select and delete %1$d or more photos.” Users will then see another pop-up titled “Clean up your library,” with the message: “We found some photos you may want to delete.”
The strings indicate that users will be able to review the suggestions before deleting them. Google Photos will also receive a new setting related to this feature, allowing users to turn off the suggestions if they don’t find them helpful.
We couldn’t surface the UI for this feature in the current Google Photos release, so we believe it may not roll out anytime soon. We’ll monitor further development and share more details as soon as they become available.
