Google Photos 4.0 with Material Design and new swipe gesture is here

Google announced that the Google Photos Android app would get a revamp this year, and now it looks like that revamp is rolling out to everyone. Along with a Google Photos Material Design theme, the app also gets a new swipe gesture that should make your life a bit easier when you’re looking for photo info.

Curiously, Google Photos on the web still doesn’t have a Material Design theme to it, even though Chrome 69 pushed a Material refresh across the whole browser. I guess we have to wait a little longer for that.

Anyway, the Google Photos Android app functions in much the same way as it did before, but with Google Photos 4.0, everything has a sleeker, more rounded look.

Check out the screenshots below, taken on a OnePlus 5 running the latest stable version of Android 8.1 Oreo (skinned with OxygenOS):

Aside from the Google Photos Material Design refresh, there’s also a new swipe gesture included in the app. When you’re looking at a photo, you can swipe from the bottom up and you’ll easily see the information for that photo (device info, storage location, GPS coordinates where it was taken, etc.). You can still see this info by tapping on the overflow menu and tapping “Info,” but a quick swipe makes things a lot easier.

Check out the GIF below to see how it works:

While this new swipe gesture isn’t exactly a game-changer, it does emphasize Google’s apparent intention to make Android a very swipe-heavy operating system. You can argue in the comments whether or not that’s a good or bad thing.

Google Photos 4.0 appeared on my OnePlus 5 when I woke up this morning, so it’s a good bet you have it now or will have it very soon. Click the button below to install the latest version!