If you’re using Google Photos as your default gallery app on your phone, it doesn’t always mean that the photos you view there are already backed up to the cloud. There are times when you delete items from your phone, thinking that it is already up on their servers. The latest update to the app now has indicators to show you which photos or videos have not been backed up yet so you can make sure that you manually upload them if necessary.
This feature was actually something that Google Photos had before but for some reason, they eventually removed it. The good news is that once you’ve updated to the latest version, you’ll see a new gallery view which tells you which content isn’t safe yet and shouldn’t be deleted from your local gallery. There’s really nothing groundbreaking about this but it’s pretty useful for those who take a lot of photos and videos and have not set the app to do automatic backups.
The other new thing with this update is not something that is applicable for everyone. The Google Photos app is now compatible with foldable devices, in anticipation of the upcoming launch (if it ever pushes through though) of the Samsung Galaxy Fold. There are no details on how it has support for devices like this, except to say that there are “several improvements” to the app. We’ll find out more once we’ve seen how it looks like on the Galaxy Fold.
This is just the latest of new features that have been introduced to the app. The previous update showed you the ability to auto-crop receipts and documents so you don’t need to have a separate scanning app. The Live Albums capacity has also been limited to just 20,000, which some have protested but which is probably a good enough number for normal Photo users.
If you’re not seeing the new indicators yet on your gallery, then the update probably hasn’t reached you yet. You can just turn on the automatic backup while you don’t have it yet, just to make sure you don’t miss anything.
