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The Google Photos image editor now responds to your phone's theme
- The editing interface in Google Photos now supports a light-theme editing interface on Android.
- The editor’s theme follows your device settings.
- We saw this change in development last year, but it seems to be rolling out broadly this week.
Back in November, we spotted that Google was cooking up a new light theme for the image editor in Google Photos. At the time, enabling this look took some tinkering — but now, the new light theme is rolling out publicly in multiple versions of the Photos Android app.
The editing view for Google Photos has historically featured a dark gray background. That’s easier on the eyes when using your phone in a dark room, but it might not always be what you want. After an apparent server-side update that’s hitting users this week, that background will match your device theme: dark gray on dark mode, light gray for light mode.
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Editing on a dark background can make it easier to assess the contrast and colors in your photos. But it’s not always easy to judge brightness when editing in a dark UI, at least in my experience — a photo might visually pop on a dark background, but then look dull when shared in an app that has a lighter interface. The ability to choose whether the background of your editing view is dark or light can be handy.
What is your favorite Google Photos feature?
Unfortunately, if you use your phone’s light theme but would prefer the Photos editor UI stay dark, you might be out of luck. As far as I can tell, with this recent change, the editing view always follows your device theme; there’s no in-app toggle to choose between the two.
We’re seeing this change on phones from multiple manufacturers in versions 7.59 and 7.60 of the Google Photos app, which leads us to believe it’s a server-side update that’s now rolling out broadly. If you don’t have the new light editor theme, you ought to soon.
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