Google Photos gets a new toggle that helps you quickly choose between fast or intelligent search
Thanks to Google';s new toggle, you can decide how fast or how through you want the app to find a photo.
Google adds an important new toggle to the Google Photos app. | Image by PhoneArena
Google announced today that it heard feedback from users of the Google Photos app who have been asking for a way they can have more control over their search results on the app. As a result, Google is now allowing Google Photos users to choose between the classic fast search and the intelligent Ask Photos results. A toggle is being added to the Google Photos app allowing users to switch between these two options:
The new Google Photos Search toggle allows you to quickly switch between fast search, and intelligent search
Fast Search, the "Classic Search," is the keyword-based tool and users get a response instantly. Google says that this method for searching in the Google Photos app is the best for searches like "beach 2022" or "cat photos."
The other search option you have for Google Photos is the "Intelligent mode" or Ask Photos. This option employs the Gemini 3 AI models, which makes it more powerful than Classic Search. However, it also makes it slower than Classic Search because the models have to reason through your photo library. This would be the Google Photos search option to use if you have a more complex search request such as, "Show me the day we brought our puppy home" or, "What was the name of that street in Manhattan we walked across after the blizzard in New York?"
Google Photos now allows users to quickly switch between two different search types. | Image by Google
Google says that it will answer using the search method and delivering the results that best fit your query. However, keep in mind that with the new toggle you will always be able to switch the view in order to get the search results you want. The Google Photos app is available for both Android and iOS and the new toggle has yet to show up on the varant of the app that is installed on my iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 26.4 Beta 4.
Why this is a smart move by Google
If you look at the photo showing the two different views that we've embedded into this article, you can see the toggle on the left side of the display just under the "Back" arrow. Classic Search is on when the toggle is off leaving the AI Mode icon (the magnifying glass with a Gemini spark) in white on a gray button. When Ask Photos is enabled, the toggle is white with the AI Mode icon in blue and the button is inside a blue pill.
This is a smart move by Google because it gives users of the Google Photos app the opportunity to get AI-based search without totally giving up the speed of keyword-based search. Considering that the Google Photos app has 1.5 billion monthly active users, the addition of the toggle is going to be a big deal that helps many users of the app on both iOS and Android.
"Ask Photos" is called the worst feature ever and over 1,600 Redditors agree
Before Google came up with this toggle feature, it introduced Ask Photos as an upgraded Search option powered by Gemini AI. But it was slower. Google Photos users hated it, with one Reddit post calling it "The worst feature ever." More than 1,600 Redditors agreed and upvoted the post. Of course, some Google Photos users just hate AI. The Reddit post that called Ask Photos the worst feature also made the author's feelings about AI well known. "What the actual f*** is this AI b*******?," he wrote.
The Redditor, with the username "rapgraves," says that he has over 50,000 photos in his Photo Gallery, many of birds. "I used to be able to search for 'kookaburra' and a kookaburra would show up," he said. With Ask Photos, no kookaburra photos would come up at all when he searched for them. When he used AI Ask to search for 'birds', only six would show up even though he has over 400 pictures of birds saved in the app.
Now, when he uses the Google Photos app, one quick flick of the toggle has rapgraves using classic keyword-based search to help him find his birds.
Follow us on Google News
Things that are NOT allowed:
To help keep our community safe and free from spam, we apply temporary limits to newly created accounts: