A vacation moment with my partner changed how I use Google Photos

My partner and I visited a beach in India during Christmas. It was great fun as usual, but I have another good reason to keep this vacation in my memory.

In addition to taking us to beautiful places near the beach area, it gave me a chance to learn a cool trick about Google Photos.

I’ll admit that it was embarrassing that I had been ignoring something as simple as this all my life.

But it doesn’t matter now, because ultimately, what matters the most are the gains, whenever they come. It’s always better late than never.

I didn’t find it accidentally — my partner deserves the credit for this.

She showed me a cool trick in Google Photos that allows users to send photos quickly to someone. The trick has changed how I use Google Photos forever.

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By  Anu Joy

The quiet power of a small circle in Google Photos

Google Photos automatically organizes your photos by the date you clicked them, with the most recent appearing first.

But little did I know that those dates do more than they appear. I realized this while sending photos that I clicked at the beach with my Samsung Galaxy S21.

I never noticed the small white circle that sits next to each date on Google Photos. Those circles are there to help you bulk select all the photos and videos you took on a single day.

This is how she corrected me when I was preparing to send photos by selecting them individually on Google Photos.

It was a little embarrassing that it never caught my attention. It didn’t last long, because while using the feature, I discovered another cool trick to bulk select.

Instead of taping the circle on the right side of the screen, you can tap and hold the date. This automatically selects all the photos and videos you captured on that date.

I can now share them easily with someone, delete, add to an album, move to the archive, back up, or move to the Locked Folder.

It also works if you change the Photos view layout from Day to Month. But in that case, you’ll long-press the month to select all the shots you took throughout those 30 days.

This will work better for a left-handed person than a right-handed person because the former has their thumbs closer to the dates than the white circle, which is available on the right side of the app’s Photos page.

I’m right-handed, so it’s easier for my thumb to reach the small circle than taping and holding the date. But the gesture will come in handy for me in specific scenarios, like when eating.

What Google can do to make multi-select better in Google Photos

The joy of discovering the gesture wasn’t the only reason the oh-no moment didn’t last long after my partner showed the trick.

I immediately started wondering what could be the reason it went unnoticed for this long.

Maybe I wasn’t more attentive than I should have been. But Google deserves equal, if not more, criticism for making a poor UX decision.

I understand the rationale behind making the circle tiny, but what stopped Google from bringing it closer to the date?

Had it appeared immediately next to the date instead of on the right side of the screen, it would have been much easier to spot the circle.

The gesture can’t compensate for this poor implementation because you can’t spot them in the app. You either know about it, or you don’t.

I would love to see the circle moved closer to the date, so that it stays well within the line of sight. It won’t make the interface look bad, so there is no real trade-off. Only benefits.

I made a promise

I don’t take a lot of photos with my phone, let alone share them with anyone. This is what worries me the most.

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If you learn a new trick and don’t use it enough, chances are you’ll use the same old technique again because of muscle memory.

The same can happen to me because I don’t use Google Photos daily. However, the trick is worth going the extra mile to break the old habit and learn a new way of multi-selecting.

It saves time and looks good. That’s enough reason already to put extra effort into developing muscle memory for the small white circle.

The biggest challenge will be unlearning the old way of multi-selecting because I will still need it when I have to select only a few photos that I clicked in a day or a month.

If Google doesn’t improve it, being more context-aware will be the key.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but Google Photos’ multi-select is something I promised myself to nail in 2026, with or without Google’s help.

Thank you, partner.