Google wants you to make less effort when you showcase folders of vacation pictures during your next family get-together.
The company recently unveiled the slideshow option for Google Photos, and the feature works on both the Android app and the Web interface. iOS users don't have access to the feature yet.
With slideshows, you can forget about clicking every single image from every folder to show it to friends and family. Thanks to the new capability, you can just open a folder, select a photo and hit the Slideshow button found in the drop-down menu. The slideshow can be halted by tapping a photo.
Google recommends that users cast the Chrome tab to the TV so that the audience can enjoy the myriad of photos on a larger screen, thus vastly improving the viewing experience. On the downside, users are unable to tweak the speed of the slideshow so some of us will have to muster a bit of patience while sitting through our friends' or relatives' pictures.
This is not the first time that Google ups the ante in its Photos app.
The enterprise previously launched a feature that organizes the album, so that users don't have to waste time doing it themselves. Among other things, Google Photos crafts a new album from recent snapshots and even offers to select the best pictures of the bunch.
A neat tool comes in form of the maps that the app adds, so that you remember precisely where the photo was taken. To add an additional layer of meaning to your album, you can also add a text caption to each photo before creating the folder.
It will take some time before Google musters the deep learning capability to detect the emotions its users felt when taking the photos, but we are confident that the day is not that far.
So far, Google Photos counts about 200 million users in an increasingly competitive market.
The company strives to be more attractive than major rivals such as Apple's Photos app or Flickr and continues updating its app with features. One interesting thing Google Photos can do is change the date on multiple images at the same time. Another helpful feature is the face-identification algorithm.
Keep in mind that Google Photos can store an unlimited number of photos and videos. The service also permits users to upload their photos into the company's cloud storage to free up space on their smartphones.
