This subtle new Google Photos change has simplified how I manage my library

For the past few years, Google Photos has gone through a million redesigns. From a You tab to a Library tab to a Collections tab, a search bar to no search bar, a pull-up menu for options to an overflow ⋮ menu, and that awful new photo editor, it’s tough to keep up with whatever change Photos’ designers are testing or have settled on. But there’s one minor change that’s probably gone under the radar, and that has made my personal Photos experience so much better.

I’m talking about the improved functionality when adding photos to albums. I used to scroll for seconds if not minutes on end, trying to find the album that I wanted to add a photo to, but now, it’s all simpler and faster. It’s perfect for someone like me with a large photo library and dozens upon dozens of albums.

What was wrong with Photos’ old “Add to album” feature

Previously, whenever I wanted to add a pic or a bunch of pics to an album, Photos popped up a little menu with a list of my albums. That list had the three most recently updated albums on top, followed by a reverse chronological order of albums based on when the most recently shot picture or video in them. So, if I started an album in 2017 for all of the nose-shaped items I’ve run across (a running joke between my husband and me), and I’ve been randomly updating it through the years, I had to try to remember when exactly the last nose photo was taken to try to locate that album. Otherwise, I was scrolling indefinitely through my… oof, I just counted them… 195 albums trying to find that one.

It’s one of the reasons many of my album names have flags and emojis in them, to simplify spotting them in Google Photos in long un-sortable lists like these. Basically, I hated the experience, and I always wondered why Google wouldn’t make it nicer. The interface was perfect if you just created albums for your recent photos, and your entire memories were split into distinct, time-based buckets, but it sucked if there were overarching albums that spanned years.

I have an album for all the concerts I attend, one for pics of my husband walking in random places, the nose album, an album for all the small changes we’re slowly making in our new house, one for all the wallpaper-worthy shots I’ve taken over the years, and so on. All of these used to be interpersed somewhere in the “Add to Album” pop-up, and I had to scroll and dig to find them each time I wanted to add a new pic.

About a few weeks ago, I noticed that Photos had finally changed this pop-up and added three important features: a search bar, a sort method, and filters for albums shared with me or my own albums. I love all of these.

I can finally start typing in “no…” and get my infamous nose album. Or “con…” to quickly locate my concert shots album. I can filter to only see the albums that have been shared with me and add more photos to a friendly event. Or I can sort by alphabetical album title order, most recent photo, or last modified album. It’s all so incredibly convenient for my organizational skills and my need to quickly and efficiently keep my albums up to date with the latest shots.

I don’t know why it took Google this long to add this, but I’m glad it did. Anyone with more than 20 or so albums will find this super small change a welcome improvement. When you live life, attend more events, travel, hike, have more birthdays and more parties, etc., then albums tend to pile up and mushroom into a complicated mess. I love that there’s an easier way now to keep them organized. Now, if only we could have this same interface when picking up albums to display on Nest Hubs and Google TV screen savers.