Google Photos Now Syncs Liked Images With Apple Photos, Hits 5 Billion Installs on Play Store

Google Photos has received an update that will let you sync your liked images on the app with Apple Photos. The new feature is expected to deliver a smooth cross-platform experience for users of the app, which is popular across both Android and iOS platforms. In the meanwhile, Google Photos app, widely used for taking backups, reached 5 billion installs on the Google Play, becoming the second Android app this year behind WhatsApp to hit the milestone, and joining a club of several other Google apps to reach the mark over the years.

The new feature accessible through the Settings menu of the Google Photos app for iOS is detailed by post, as spotted by Android Police. To start syncing your accounts, open Google Photos on your iPhone or iPad > Tap your profile photo on the top right > Tap Photos Settings > Tap Apple Photos >Tap Sync favourites and flip the toggle. Once you switch this feature on, photos that are favourited (heart) in Apple Photos camera roll sync with Favourites (star) in Google Photos, and vice-versa. If you unfavourite a photo in one app, it does it in the other as well.

Google notes that if Google Photos users on iOS may already see the prompt in the app, and can quickly turn on the sync feature via the Favourites. If users turn off sync, previously favourited photos will remain favourites.

According to the report by Android Police, the Apple Photos app will sync almost instantly when you star an image in Google Photos. However, the process is reportedly a bit slower when reversed, with Google Photos taking a minute or two to catch up. The report says that closing the app and opening it again to force a refresh will hurry that process along.

As we mentioned, Google Photos has also hit the 5 billion installs mark recently, becoming the second Android app to do so this year, after WhatsApp. A point to be noted of course, is that Google Photos comes pre-installed on a large number of Android phones. This means that Android phone activations automatically push the install count up, regardless of if the app is actively utilised by the user.

Launched in 2015, Google Photos had notched one billion installs by June 2017. As we mentioned though, this doesn't reflect the number of active users. Google Photos reached the 1 billion monthly active users mark in July 2019. By reaching the milestone of 5 billion installs, Google Photos joins the ranks of other Google apps to have achieved the same feat - Play Music, Chrome, Gmail, Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Play.

Google on Tuesday also announced that Pixel phones would be getting new machine learning-based filters in Google Photos as a part of its December feature drop. The feature enhances the capability of editing pictures in Google Photos.

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