Google Photos – Partner Sharing
Google Photos has a new feature that allows you to share photos/videos with one person. You can choose to share All photos or Photos of specific people.
The shared library will appear in the Sharing tab on both the website and mobile app. You can manage your shared photos and videos here, including deleting them or making them the album cover.
1. Automatically saves your photos
If your significant other uses Google Photos, you can use Partner Sharing to automatically share photos and videos on your behalf. This feature works by using Google’s face recognition technology to identify people in your photos and send them to a recipient of your choice. It’s important to note that this feature does require backing up your photos and giving Google permission to identify faces, which may be a concern for some people.
When you share photos with a partner, they can see them in their own library. They can also access them in a Messenger-style conversation page and create a link that lets anyone view the shared content. If you want to stop the partnership, you can do so by tapping the three dots in the top right corner of the shared library and selecting Settings.
2. Access your photos anytime
Partner Sharing is a feature inside Google Photos that allows you to share your entire library automatically with a single person. Once you share your library, any new photo or video you take will automatically appear on their phone inside the Google Photos app and will be saved to their device.
You can also create albums with specific people, such as your kids, and all the new photos of them will be automatically saved to that album. Google will even try to detect faces in the photos and sort them into that album if it can.
Photos saved by the partner don’t occupy any storage on your account or device until you stop sharing them. They will also show up in the sharing tab on the web if you’re using that feature, which is similar to a Messenger-style conversation page.
3. Share your photos with multiple people
With holiday gatherings and travel in full swing, family members often take a lot of photos and videos. With Partner Sharing, Google Photos can automatically share these images and videos with multiple people.
When you set up partner sharing, you’ll choose if you want to share all your photos or just photos of specific people. You can also decide how far back you want to go when sharing.
Once you’ve shared your photos and videos, you can see them in the “Shared” tab on the web or the mobile app. You can select any conversation to manage the content, such as deleting or making it the album cover.
Keep in mind that using Partner Sharing requires backing up your photos and giving Google permission to detect faces. This may make some people uncomfortable.
4. Works on all devices
When you set up Google Photos Partner Sharing, you can access your shared photos on Android phones, iPhones, and the web. This means that you can take pictures on one device and instantly view them on another.
The best part is that these photos are automatically saved and don’t count towards your storage space, so you can always recover them if needed. Plus, they’re saved in the cloud and can be accessed at any time, even if your partner removes them from Partner Sharing.
You can also use Google Photos to create videos of your favorite memories, like a collage of all your wedding photos or a movie of your kids growing up over the years. Google will select the best photos and videos, and then put them together in a beautiful video.
5. Works on the web
Google’s photo sharing feature is still there, but it seems to have changed a bit in how users set up what to share and with whom. According to a longtime Android Police reader, the setup process now requires users to determine how much of their library they want to save automatically before choosing partners to share with.
Partner Sharing uses face detection technology to automatically send photos of specific people—say, a significant other or child—to that person without the user having to ask them. However, the feature only works if you back up your photos to Google and are willing to allow Google to detect faces. This may be an issue for some people. Those who are interested in enabling the feature can find it in the Sharing tab of Google Photos.