Searching through large amounts of data is Google's bread and butter, and so it's surprising that the search tools in Google Photos are a little lacking. You can search for certain things by name, and there are filters of sorts with people, pets, places, etc, but you can't easily use more than one at a time. Thankfully, Google is working on a more robust set of filters.

Prolific app sleuth Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) discovered this work-in-progress feature in what looks like the Android version of Google Photos. There's a new 'Filters' button right below the search field as well as suggested additions that appear to be people. Filters such as selfies, videos, and motion photos are also among the options. This means you'll be able to search for a selfie of you and a friend in a specific place very easily.

It's worth noting that this is technically already possible. I can search for "selfies of me and Daniela in Lisbon," for example, and it will bring up corresponding photos. It's likely that not everyone knows how powerful this text search function is, however, so implementing these visible filters will make it much more user-friendly for most.

There's no telling when this new search tool will roll out to users, but it looks fairly advanced so it may not take long. Let's hope this won't be exclusive to Google One users like some of the editing features currently are.