First look: Here's how Google Photos' new Redact tool will work

Google Photos’ Redact tool has moved from a string buried in the code to something we could actually tap, and we’ve got the demo to prove it. We first flagged this feature last month during an APK teardown of Google Photos v7.85, when a code string promised to “redact sensitive areas of your photos.” Back then, the button crashed the app the moment it was tapped, leaving the actual redaction method a mystery. Google Photos has since moved on to version 7.89, and we managed to enable it ahead of its release to put it through its paces.

The Redact tool is located in the Markup section of Google Photos’ photo editor, alongside the existing Pen, Highlighter, and Text tools. Tap it, and the editor swaps in a dedicated redaction panel: a slider to adjust the size of the redaction brush, and three ways to actually hide whatever’s underneath it, namely Mosaic, Mosaic Light, and Blur.

Mosaic breaks the selected area into small pixelated blocks, similar to the pixelation option in OnePlus/OPPO’s gallery app. Mosaic Light essentially does the same thing, but with noticeably larger blocks, resulting in coarser, less detailed pixelation. Blur, meanwhile, isn’t a soft, smooth blur. Rather, Google layers a grain-like noise over the selected area, closer to static than to the smooth camera-style blur you’d expect from the name.

Below the mode picker sit undo and redo buttons, plus a reset option that clears every redaction in one tap, handy if the brush wanders somewhere it shouldn’t. In our tests, Mosaic and Mosaic Light rendered instantly and scaled predictably with brush size, while Blur’s grainy texture held up even when we zoomed in.

This is still very much a work in progress on Google’s end. The Redact tool remains unavailable to users, and there’s no indication of when, or even if, it’ll roll out publicly. But going from a crash-on-tap button to a working, three-mode redaction tool in the space of a month is a real step forward.