Google Photos: incognito mode arrives

The new version of Google Photos will also welcome incognito mode and solve the problem of shared albums. Here's how it will work

On the occasion of the Google I/O 2019 that was held in the first days of May, the Mountain View company unveiled some news related to upcoming products and services. Among the protagonists we also find Google Photos, the platform for managing your own photo gallery (but also cloud storage to save photos online) connected to your Big G account.

With a view to improving the management of users' personal data, and offer them more customization options (and a higher level of security), Mountain View developers have introduced incognito mode, which will allow you to store images and videos without leaving any particular traces. A new icon for Google Lens has been added to the app.

Google Photos: How does incognito mode work?

As mentioned, with the update of Google Photos to version 4.16 incognito mode will arrive, designed to replace the "Use without account" mode present today. Currently, the new feature can't be activated yet, but it shouldn't be long before the official launch. This detail, apparently minor, tells us a lot, however, about how incognito works. Those who decide to use this mode, in fact, will not need to log in: they will be able to continue to manage their images on the smartphone, but without the possibility of synchronization in the cloud.

Google Photos and the problem of shared albums

The team of Mountain View developers is also working on solving a long-standing problem that affects Google Photos: the one that prevents you from deleting a user after he has been added to a shared album. This in fact currently continues to be able to view archived photos. The only thing that can currently be done is to block it. But this does not prevent him from accessing the gallery through the link that may have been sent to him via email. So he continues to be able to view all the photos present even if he is excluded from that album. The removed user can alternatively create a new gallery and insert new photos in the shared album. In this case, however, comments and photos added to users who had access to the album are lost. It is not yet known how Google will fix the problem, but sources reveal that work is underway.