Google Photos 4.30 prepares to add manual face tagging

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One of the coolest features in Google Photos is the app’s ability to automatically recognize faces and tag people. However, sometimes the app fails to recognize people and they’re left untagged. While the app does allow you to remove incorrect tags, it currently doesn’t let you add tags by yourself. Earlier this year, Google Photos product lead, David Lieb, revealed a couple of upcoming features for the app. Among these was the ability to add manual face tags, but Lieb didn’t confirm when the feature would be released to users. A teardown of the latest update for the app reveals that the new feature might be released soon.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

New strings discovered in version 4.30 of Google Photos highlight the upcoming feature and reveal some information about how it may work when released. The app will essentially allow you to tag people and pets by yourself, in case the app fails to add tags automatically. You’ll be able to create new tags for people/pets and the app will then group the tagged photos with others of the same people/pets. The app will prompt users when there are faces available to tag and it will let you edit the tags at a later stage in case you make a mistake. You’ll be able to check all the tags you’ve added in a new ‘Recently tagged’ section and you’ll get the ability to discard tags as well. It’s worth noting that the manual face tag feature will require an internet connection to work.

<string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_all_people_clusters">All people</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_all_people_pet_clusters">All people & pets</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_create_cluster_dialog_create">Create</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_create_cluster_dialog_message">"You can tag other photos of this person or pet, and they'll be grouped with this one in your library"</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_create_cluster_dialog_title">Create new person?</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_create_cluster_dialog_title_pet">Create new person or pet?</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_create_cluster_promo">You can create a new person here</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_create_cluster_promo_pet">You can create a new person or pet here</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_edit_people_pets_title">Edit people & pets</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_edit_people_title">Edit people</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_error_dialog_message">Check your internet connection and try again</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_error_dialog_retry">Try again</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_error_dialog_title">Trouble editing people</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_other_faces_header">Available to tag</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_recent_clusters">Recently tagged</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_save_warning_dialog_discard">Discard</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_save_warning_dialog_keep_editing">Keep editing</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_save_warning_dialog_message">"Your edits won't be saved"</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_save_warning_dialog_title">Discard changes?</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_show_hidden_faces">View hidden faces</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_title_add">Add tag</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_title_change">Change tag</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_toast_created">Created</string> <string name="photos_mediadetails_people_facetag_toast_tagged">Tagged</string>

As of now, it isn’t clear when manual face tagging will go live in Google Photos. But since Google has already added these new strings to the app, it shouldn’t be long before the feature arrives on a beta release.

Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.