Google Photos wants to highlight the best parts of your videos with 'snippets'

Android Police

By Will Sattelberg

Published Mar 31, 2022

But it's not available to everyone just yet

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Even after losing out on unlimited storage last year, Google Photos continues to be one of the company's most popular apps. It's nearly indispensable for sorting through extensive collections of stills and videos, all while some AI tools help to highlight treasured memories each and every day. Some users have spotted an extra category in Photos that seems to hint at a fresh way for sharing and watching smaller sections of videos.

As reported by Reddit user u/CraftSquid426, a new option for "snippets" appeared in the search tab in Photos. While I have yet to see it appear on my Pixel 6, my iPhone does have a listing for snippets under its "Creations" section in settings. Unfortunately, selecting this tag returns a "No results" page, which doesn't give us much information on the tool. Other writers at Android Police have also failed to find snippets appearing on their devices, suggesting a server-side change rather than an app update.

Left: Photos on a Pixel 6, missing the "snippets" option. Middle, right: Snippets showing up on iOS, without any results.

Based on how the search page appears, snippets appear to be a new creation category, alongside collages and animations. The icon shows a strip of film, implying this will likely take a smaller section of a longer video to create an easily shareable clip.

Furthermore, evidence from one of our tipsters shows an option to save specific snippets appearing in the app's main carousel of highlighted content. These clips seem to be exactly what you'd imagine — trimmed videos, automatically selecting what it assumes is the best part of the recording. In testing, however, it seemed to be a random part of the video; not bad, but nothing outstanding compared to the rest of the clip. So far, it's only been spotted on videos of pets.

We aren't sure when this feature will launch for everyone. For now, check out the app on your phone to see if you've got Google's latest category.