Google Photos starts testing new ‘chip’ shortcuts

New Delhi: American tech giant Google is testing a new chip toolbar for its photos app, Google Photos.

Google Photos and Google Lens are a pair of very powerful companions for your phone’s camera. For a while, the Photos app has offered integration with Lens to handle text inside both images you take yourself, as well as screenshots — it may not be 100 per cent accurate, but it works well.

In an attempt to make these features more accessible to users, Google is now testing new ‘chip’ shortcuts when it detects there’s text in an image, reported Android Police.

Google Photos already demonstrates the ability to recognize the presence of text and direct users towards interacting with it in Lens.

If you’re part of this new test, though, you’ll see additional chips with options like ‘Copy text’, ‘Listen’, ‘Crop’, and ‘Markup’. These are all already existing options within the app — the addition of these new shortcuts seems intended to make them all that much more visible and easier to access.

There is also a shortcut to search using Google Lens, which is kind of pointless given you already have a Lens button in the bottom bar.