Google Photos wants to become your go-to app for making collages

I don’t know about you, but for me, Google Photos is the closest thing to a digital time capsule. I’ve used it to back up my photos longer than any social media app has, and I expect to do so until Google lets the app live. Besides automatically generated memories, you can also revisit memories by creating collages within the Photos app. But if you use the built-in Collage Editor in Photos, you might find it limiting compared to other third-party apps. Thankfully, Google is now testing new features that let you tweak collages to your taste and keep you from having to look for alternatives.

In October, Google updated the Collage Editor in Google Photos, expanding possibilities for creating new images. The update introduced new grid options and frame presets, along with editing features that let you change the configuration without starting over.

Just a few months later, it appears to be testing a new, cleaner interface that combines templates into a single option and adds more border styles. Instead of a scrolling carousel of buttons, we now see dedicated buttons for “Templates” and “Borders.”

We spotted these under-trial features in version7.62.0.865122296 of the Google Photos app, but they’re not widely available.

While the Templates option combines the existing layouts into a single page, the Borders option lets you customize the frames on your collage. Since the latter option is new, it also contains some new options for the border width, radius, and color. You can play around with each of these options to adjust the size, curvature, or color of the border.

Notably, these border options currently only apply to the simpler frames in the collection and won’t appear if you choose the more complex, graphic-intensive frame. When you choose such a frame, the Borders button simply disappears.

Since this is a pre-release version of the Collage Editor, we can’t say whether these changes are final. We don’t know if these changes will roll out anytime soon, especially since an update came recently.