Google Photos on Android is getting a Collections tab you can rearrange yourself. You can pin the shortcuts you use most, hide rows you never open and change the order of the rest. The change is rolling out widely with Google Photos version 7.97.
Google has not published its own announcement, so what follows comes from a hands-on report. The redesign follows the floating navigation bar that Google added to the app in July.
Collections is where albums, people, places, documents and folders such as Trash live. Until now its layout was the same for everyone, so a folder you open daily could sit far down a long page.
Pinned cards, hideable rows and a Reorder button
9to5Google’s hands-on shows a Pinned area at the top, where you choose which cards appear. The default set is Favorites, Screenshots and Trash. If you would rather not have it at all, the whole area can be removed.
Below it, the app shows horizontal rows for folders on your device, albums, people and pets, wardrobe, places and documents. Each row can be hidden. A Reorder button at the bottom of the page lets you put the rows in the order you prefer, and a View all link in the top-right corner of a row opens it as a full grid or list.
The fixed grid it replaces
The old tab opened with a two-by-two grid of shortcuts, where Favorites and Trash never moved. Large cards for categories such as Albums, People and pets and Places came next, followed by a list of the remaining folders. The new layout swaps that for the Pinned area, the rows above and an Other Collections grid for everything else, including Videos, Stickers, Archive, Locked and Trash.
No Play Store update, maybe a restart
The redesign is for the Android app only and arrives from Google’s servers, so it can appear without a Play Store update. If your phone does not show it yet, the publication says its reviewer received the new tab after restarting the phone and opening Photos again.
If it still has not appeared after a few days, the rollout simply has not reached your account.
