Google Photos just got a fresh new design, and it’s getting a couple of functional improvements. With its latest updates, Google Photos will stop backing up pictures from messaging and social media apps by default, as well as adding a mute button for videos.

Google Photos will no longer backup images and videos saved from folders created and managed by social media apps by default. Previously, Google’s photo backup platform would automatically upload all images saved to your Android or iOS device, including those files stored in folders created by apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Now, Google says that feature is turned off, and you’ll have to toggle it on for specific apps or run manual backups on specific folders.

Google is citing the surge in image sharing happening since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “People are sharing more photos and videos due to COVID-19. To save internet resources, backup & sync has been turned off for device folders created by messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messages, and Kik. You can change this anytime in settings,” reads a support page detailing the change.

Google is stressing that any photos already backed up and organized via social media apps are unaffected by the change, and that you can still go to individual folders within the Google Photos app and turn on the “back up & sync” feature. Google has a handy guide here for finding your existing social media-related images and videos on Google Photos, for running manual batch backups, and for turning on the automatic backup feature. Some of the affected platforms include Facebook's family of apps, the default Messages client on Android, Snapchat, and Twitter, among others.

Google is also adding a mute button to Photos. Thanks to a server-side update, Photos will add a mute button any time you start watching a video at the end of the timeline scrubber. This change isn’t widely available just yet — it’s not live on my device, for example — but it should be available for everyone sometime in the near future.

Source- The Verge