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Has Google Photos search been broken for you? Here's how to fix it
- Google Photos has been having issues searching through your pics, dating back several weeks now.
- Not all Photos users were affected by this issue.
- Google claims to have now resolved the bug, and getting search working again should be as easy as updating the app.
OK, let’s say you need to find a picture you took on your phone. What kind of Google Photos user are you? Do you immediately just start scrolling through your gallery at breakneck pace, trusting that you’ll spot the pic when it whizzes by? Or are you the sort of person who takes full advantage of the increasingly sophisticated search tools Photos offers? If you count yourself among that latter camp, you may have felt frustrated be some recent issues impacting the ability of Photos to deliver search results. Thankfully, the fix is in.
Google shares that it’s recently gotten to the bottom of a Photos search bug, where the service would just blank out on your query and deliver zero results — even if you had plenty of pics matching your search terms (via Android Police). Other reports had users actually getting some results back, but with them not lining up with the search terms at all.
It doesn’t appear that this issue affected a huge fraction of users (and depending on how you engage with Photos, you might not have even noticed if that group included you), but for those who were impacted, they’ve been unable to use the app’s search feature for the past few weeks. Android Police did some legwork trying to figure out the timeline here, and it looks like the bug cropped up sometime over the course of August.
As for resolving it, the solution is pretty straightforward: Just update Google Photos. The company reports that everything should be back to full working order in the app’s most recent release — although we do notice that Google seems particularly eager for feedback from affected users, as if it’s still not 100% convinced. Throw it some reassurance, and if you had been experiencing this glitch, go ahead and let the company know — you can reply directly to its announcement.