I've had the Pixel 10 for 10 months, and I'm still confused by its best camera feature

It’s been nearly 10 months since the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL arrived at my door, and I’ve been using it as my main phone ever since. It’s my go-to camera, too, and I’ve shot over 4,000 photos and videos with it so far. So when I say that I’m dumbfounded by one of its camera features, please know that it’s not for lack of trying.

The feature I’m specifically talking about is Auto Best Take, which is the smarter and less involved version of the previous Pixels’ Best Take. And no matter what I try, I just can’t get it to work for me.

What Auto Best Take is supposed to do

On the Pixel 10, Auto Best Take is supposed to augment the already-existing Best Take feature that launched with the Pixel 8. When you take a series of group photos, you can open the Photos app and go to Edit > Actions > Best Take to force the app to look for similar pics and suggest different faces to create a mosaic where everyone is smiling and looking their best.

The Pixel 10 was supposed to automate that process. You just snap a few group shots, and instead of manually picking faces and improving the picture, the phone should do that for you, and suggest a merged photo with everyone’s best faces. That’s the whole point of “Auto” in Auto Best Take. The feature is shown off in the video below, and also in a clear GIF in Google’s announcement post here. Except that no matter what I try, I can’t get it to work properly.

There’s an Auto Best Take setting, but does it really work?

Up until a few weeks ago, Google had zero explanation for how Auto Best Take should work or how to trigger it. The official support page only mentioned having Top Shot set to Auto as a requirement. I spent months trying to get one Auto Top Shot photo over the holidays, friend get-togethers, and group events. Nothing worked. I would only get the few pics that I shot — nothing automatically collated from them.

Now, though, an update to the Pixel Camera app has added a standalone toggle to specifically enable Auto Best Take. (It still requires Top Shot, too.) I thought it would solve my issue with the feature, but alas, not even that seems to do the trick. I’ve enabled the new setting, made sure Top Shot was on, and shot two photos of my husband and me multiple times over the last few weeks, with one of us turning sideways at each snap, to no avail.

Most of the time, I only get the two photos I shot. On a few rare occasions, I’ve ended up with a third photo (like in the examples above) that I clearly remember not taking unless my finger touched the shutter button a third time by mistake. I suspect this could be an Auto Best Take mash-up, but there are so many signs that contradict that:

1. The Pixel 10 says this third photo was taken by a Camera. The C2PA origin doesn’t indicate any edits. Manual Best Take photos signal a non-AI edit, so Auto Best Take shots should do that too, supposedly.
2. There’s no indication whatsoever in the Google Photos app that this is an Auto Best Take or Best Take photo. Google’s marketing and demos show that it should clearly indicate that.
3. If you look closely, there’s something off about the third photo compared to the other two. My husband’s head and eyes are not at the same angle as the first pic; even my own smile is slightly narrower than the second pic.

The devil’s advocate in me wants to say this third pic was snapped and amalgamated thanks to Top Shot, which is why it doesn’t match the two previous photos, but there’s nothing for me to prove it. All of this leaves me very confused about Auto Best Take. Does it work? When? How?

I’ve talked to my Android Authority colleagues to see if any of them have seen an automated Best Take shot since they got their Pixel 10 phones, and none of them has seen any. That’s already a warning sign. I’ve also reached out to Google to ask about Auto Best Take, how it worked, and how to properly trigger it, and heard nothing back.

So that leaves you. Have you seen one of the Pixel 10’s flagship camera features in action on your phone? Did you get any cool automatic mashups of group pics? Let me know in the comments. I’m curious to know.