Photos is updating Archive to now be Hidden
With as many pictures as we snap on our smartphone cameras, it’s easy to get a little overwhelmed. Pixel users (as well as everyone else who prefers using Google Photos) can hide images from their photo gallery’s primary view using the Archive option. At least, that’s the way things have worked, but perhaps in an effort to make its app a little more modern sounding, Google is in the process of renaming Archive to Hidden.
On email accounts, we use the Archive option to save messages for reference later, immediately hiding selected threads from our inbox. The Archive setting works similarly on Google Photos: you can select several photos at a time and hit the Archive option to hide them from the primary gallery view. These images can still be found in albums and search results.
Google is renaming the Archive function to Hidden, so when you open a photo and swipe up on it, you’ll see the Hide option replace the Move to Archive button. We see the same shift taking place in the Library tab. The change seems to be rolling out to the Photos app on Android, and 9to5Google reports the change is also visible on the iOS app as of version 6.1. What we haven’t seen yet are any of these changes appearing in the Photos web client.
Importantly, Google hasn’t broken anything about how the Archive function works, and this is a change in name only. Since the files remain searchable, we don’t suggest you avoid hiding sensitive data using this method, and suggest a Google Photos Locked Folder, instead. Besides this subtle update in terminology, the Photos app on Android also now shows the “Backed up” section we saw on iOS, detailing a file’s directory location in the phone’s storage alongside its size and backup quality.
Thanks: Mishaal
