Daily, we capture countless moments, often leading to blurry duplicates and similar types of things. When using an Android phone, users always have questions about photo clutter. As we all receive photos from varied sources like social media, messaging tools, and so on, it creates a messy appearance on your phone. But don’t worry, Google Photos comes with a feature called “Stack” to serve as a solution for this.
With this feature, Google Photos analyses all the photos on your phone and groups similar photos into small stacks (groups). Google Photos Stack is not just solving the photo cluttering issue. Finding specific moments in your entire photo library now seems easy. You just need to tap on a specific category in the stack to get the intended pictures. So, let’s understand how to use the Google Photos Stack.
Getting Started with PhotoStack
When you begin with Google Photos, the stack invites three things. These comprise identifying photo stacks, knowing different types of photo stacks, and the procedure to open and view the contents of a photo stack. As such, this analysis gives you a kick-start to begin your journey related to photo stacking. So, let’s have a look at each thing.
Identify photo stacks.
Before getting used to the Google Photos Stack feature, you should know whether it is available to you or not. Well, there are mostly four signs through which you can identify a stack. These vary from the stack symbol to date and time clues. To make things clear, here are possible ways to identify photo stacks.
- Stack Symbol: You will see a small stack icon in the top-right corner of some photos in your main photo view.
- Grouped Thumbnails: Notice how some photos group themselves.
- The Top Pick: When you see the small stack, it features the best pick among the other pictures.
- Date & Time Clues: You will notice that Google Photos will showcase different photos clicked at one place based on a specific time or moment.
Know the different types of photo stacks.
Primarily, it collects similar photos clicked in a specific time frame. But to give the user a different flavor, it has a varied type of stack. So have a look at the popular stacks it usually showcases, along with their intent.
- The Burst Brigade: It includes all images on your phone clicked at the camera’s highest potential.
- Blurry Bunch: Here, you will find all the blurry images in one place.
- Screenshot Squad: All screenshots will be grouped here.
- Selfie Stash: All selfies and other front-facing images will be shown in it.
- Time-Lapse Trio: Here, Stack will group the individual frames.
- Edited Entourage: Capture all edited images in one space.
Opening and viewing stack content
This section appears to be crucial as it holds the main intent, where we explain how to access such a stack. Because unless you don’t know how to open stack content, you cannot take advantage of its benefits. I want to let you know that there are two ways to open and view stack content. So, let’s have a look at both of them.
- Open Google Photos.
- Look at a photo with the stack icon.
- Now tap on the photo with the stack icon.
- Following that, a stack view will open.
- That’s it; you are done.
Alternatively, we can open the same stack by searching for a specific photo that might be part of a stack, and the stack itself might appear in the search results. Simply tap on the stack thumbnail, and so on, and the stack will open.
Using and Managing Photo Stacks
As of now, you know how to open the Stack and view its content. But the craving is not yet over. The main crux is here, where we will explain how you can make Google Photos Stack more useful, especially for you. And from the word manage, there are numerous things coupled. For this below, I am sharing all the relevant details for using and managing the photo stack.
Selecting the best photo
The Google Photos Stack algorithm works by selecting those photos in a stack that are enriched in sharpness, composition, lighting, faces, and popularity. But if you want your personalized stack, then follow this path: Open the stack, tap on the three-dot icon appearing at the photo that you want to add to the stack, and select Set as the top pick.
Sharing Photos from Stacks
Suppose someone asks you for a specific picture. And you know in which stack it can occur. So all you need to do is simply choose the photo that you want to share, tap the three dots at the top right, and then tap share. In case you want to share the entire stack, then in Stack view, tap the tree dot >> share stack.
Manage Individual Photo
Many times, we want to edit photos that are in a stack. For this, we just need to select that photo in the stack and edit it using the built-in editing tool. Similarly, we can save that masterpiece and similarly manage individuals. Or if you want, then remove the unwanted photos from the stack using the remove option under the three-dot menu appearing at each photo’s top.
Disable the Photo Stack
It might be possible that you want to disable the stack for a specific folder, or it may be for all folders. For this, you just need to open the folder, tap on the three-dot menu, and turn off the stack. For all folders, follow Google Photos settings: tap on memories, then toggle off the option next to organize photos using Photo Stack.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, Google Photo Stack introduces a range of benefits, transforming the way we organize and engage with our photo collections. From streamlined categorization to effortless sharing, this feature simplifies the photo management process. As we conclude, I encourage readers to explore Google Photo Stack and discover the advantages it brings to their digital lives. Take advantage of its customization options to tailor the experience to your unique needs.