Google Photos Rolls Out New Video Editing Tools on iOS

Google has rolled out a suite of new video editing features for Google Photos on iOS that adds granular controls for editing things such as brightness, contrast, and exposure. In addition to the fine-tune controls, users will now have the ability to crop, change the perspective, and add filters to videos directly within the app.

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In September, Google announced a redesigned editor for Google Photos that puts machine learning editing suggestions right in the center of the app UI alongside larger tabs to access editing controls directly. Google says this new redesigned experience will be available on iOS in "the coming months."

The new video editing tools themselves are already available on iOS according to Google thanks to a server-side roll-out, given the app was last updated more than two months ago. Google Photos remains a part of a handful of Google apps on the App Store that have gone for weeks without a proper update.

Google Photos was last updated in December and some have theorized that the lack of updates is due to Apple's new privacy "nutrition labels" that educates users on what data an app collects about them and whether it shares the data with 3rd parties. On December 8, Apple began requiring all app updates submitted to the App Store to include the labels and the absence of updates for Google apps seemingly suggests an unwillingness from Google to reveal its privacy practices.

Google said at the start of January that it would update its apps with the new privacy labels in the week following the statement, but so far many of its most popular apps such as Google Maps, Google Search, Google Meet, and Google Photos remain without an update or labels.

Top Rated Comments

peneaux Avatar
30 months ago
Now that the free storage is almost over, why would I put my photos for Google to crawl them?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Ursadorable Avatar
30 months ago
Ahh, another Google data harvesting app.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GeoStructural Avatar
30 months ago
This app was great when storage was free. Funny how now that it is not it has better features.

Something that annoyed me is that photos used to be public by default when this service first started, I hated Google that day, who in their right mind would want their entire photo library open? Who at Google thought we wanted that... and worst of all, they connected them with a Google+ profile I never created. They quickly changed this though.

Right now I also dislike that they do not let you use the app unless you give them access to ALL photos, you cannot choose "Select photos", it has to be all or nothing.

When you open a picture, the app can tell you the brand of the clothes you are wearing, it is so creepy how I accidently clicked on a selfie and it told me exactly the brand and price of my watch and my glasses.

I do not recommend this app. I love other Google products, just not this one.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EatinPonies Avatar
30 months ago
This seems to be a good place to ask: if you're using Google Photos right now, what are your plans in July? Will you pay for storage? Will you switch to another app/service?
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MrTechAdvice Avatar
30 months ago
STILL no Privacy labels???? lol
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Ursadorable Avatar
30 months ago

I wonder who would be the bigger loser if Google didn't exist in iPhones?
If Apple purged Google services from my iPhone, I wouldn't even notice. The worst would mean I'd be using Startpage or DuckDuckGo as my search engine in Safari. Oh wait, I already am!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)