The main navigation of Google Photos has been redesigned several times in the past and still differs between desktop and smartphone. Now the navigation area that contains the locally saved images and videos is being tightened again: the gallery has filter chips that can be used to filter the media according to their storage location.
Google Photos has a very simple and self-explanatory interface, but there is at least some catching up to do when it comes to navigation. Some things don’t seem so easy to understand and have to be searched for a long time.
This applies both to the desktop version in the browser and to the smartphone, where the mix of local media and media stored in the cloud also creates a perceived disorder. Now it seems that this is being addressed with a new series of filters.
A row of filters with the filter chips that can be found in more and more apps appears in the gallery view for the first users. However, you cannot filter individual images, only entire albums.
By default, all albums are displayed, but you can also select only real albums, only folders stored on the device or only shared albums. A mix of several options is also possible, as is known from the filter chips of other Google products.
The filters become active immediately and simply hide the deselected elements. By default, all content is displayed, so you don’t necessarily have to use the filter chips. You can find this new line of filter chips in the Gallery tab of the Android app. However, the rollout does not seem to have reached all users yet, so you may have to be patient.