Google Photos Gets Chromecast Support; New Sharing and Labelling Features

At its event on Tuesday, alongside the launch of Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Pixel C, and new Chromecast dongles, Google also announced new features for Google Photos. The features, available in the updated app, are aimed at making it easier for users to share pictures with their friends and family. The update also makes it possible for your friends and family to contribute to your album. Importantly, Chromecast support was also announced.

The biggest addition is a new feature called Shared Albums. Once you share an album with your friends, they get an option to follow updates by pressing the "Join" button. They will also be able to add photos of their own to the album. You will receive a notification when someone adds a photo to the shared album. The company said that this new feature works between Android and iOS devices, and is also accessible via the Web interface. It will be rolled out later this year however.

Another new feature provides users with new labelling capabilities. You can now label people with specific names (whether real or nickname), and also use the company's cloud-based machine learning technology to perform powerful semantic searches. To reassure users on the privacy front, Google says the labels will stay private to the uploader. The feature will be available to Android users this week and other platform users later.

The company also announced that Google Photos now supports Chromecast, which will make it possible for users to beam photos to the big screen. If you're on the same Wi-Fi network as your Chromecast, you will see an icon at the top of the photos app. Tapping it will broadcast the images.

The new additions to Google Photos are among the many new features Google has added to the service over the past few months. Earlier this year, Google announced many new features and unlimited storage to its marquee photos app for Android.