Google Photos is cooking up a more social way to react to shared pictures (APK teardown)
TL;DR Google Photos looks to be testing an emoji reaction bar for shared albums.
New emoji responses are posted as comments, unlike the current heart reaction.
We also spotted that the app might open to the 'Create' tab by default once it rolls out.
Google Photos already lets you show a little love on someone else's shared picture, but it looks like a new way to express yourself may be coming soon. Like social media and messaging apps, Google Photos could offer more ways to react to your friends and family's snaps.
⚠️ 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.
In version 7.40.0.790840830 of the app, we managed to enable a setting that revealed a redesigned interaction system for shared albums. Where you'd normally see a simple heart icon to 'like' a photo, there's now a new 'React' button instead. Tapping it brings up a bar with five emojis that you can tap to respond instantly.
There may also be a subtle shift in how these reactions are displayed. Previously, liking a photo would add a heart reaction in the comments thread instead of your profile picture, showing your name next to it. These new emojis appear to be inserted as comments. Your profile picture appears alongside them like it would for any other message.
Currently you just see a Like button
It's shown replaced by a React button.
Five new reactions are shown.
Old likes appear in the old way, whereas new reactions are comments.
This makes reactions feel more like part of the conversation, and also helps distinguish them from older likes. As you can see in the final screenshot above, any heart reactions made the old way still appear in the familiar style without a profile picture, so the two systems are coexisting while Google tests this new feature.
We also noticed that Google Photos opened to the 'Create' tab by default while these features were active. That's the section Google previewed last month to house tools like AI-powered photo animations and Remix illustrations. At the time, the company said the tab wouldn't roll out until August, so this behavior may be part of final testing before it goes live.
There's no guarantee that either change will be in this form as and when updates roll out, but both the reaction bar and the new default tab behavior seem polished enough that they might be the new normal very soon.
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