Google is testing a new feature in Photos that borrows Tinder’s swipe mechanic. It lets you swipe left to delete blurry or large photos and videos or swipe right to keep them. It’s showing up randomly for a limited number of users, sometimes with as many as 250 photos to review in a session. But there’s no way to manually turn it on right now.
Regardless, the idea is to make cleaning up cloud storage less of a chore and more of a casual activity you can do while waiting in line or killing a few minutes. That said, some users on Reddit noted that swiping through hundreds of photos can become tiring compared to simply browsing a grid.
Would you rather swipe or multi-select?
The qualms of having limited Google storage are all too familiar. You take screenshots you don’t really need, and eventually, duplicate photos pile up. Before long, your cloud space is clogged. The free tier capped at 15GB doesn't help matters as that space is shared across Gmail, Drive, and every corner of your account.
Once you hit the ceiling, Google starts nudging you with reminders to clear space or upgrade to Google One. Now, they’re gamifying what used to be one of the dullest tasks in making more space. When you run low, the app will sometimes surface a Tinder-style swipe deck.
Each photo or video appears like a card and you'll swipe left or right to sort them. Compared to the normal way of selecting pictures in a grid and deleting them in bulk, it does sound easier and better psychologically, even though multi-select is faster in raw efficiency.
When you use multi-select, you’re confronted with dozens or hundreds of photos at once. You have to make big sweeping decisions about which ones to mark, how many to take out, and whether you might regret it and retrieve them later.
The new method works because you're making tiny binary choices: keep or delete. But again, it's not like the tool replaces multi-select or the other cleanup options, and is more of an add-on.
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As shared on Reddit, some people see the swipe feature when their storage is low, while others get it even with over 100GB storage free locally or more than 1TB free in the cloud.
But then Photos deals with both local device storage and your cloud quota. Sometimes the app misinterprets usage or just decides to surface cleanup suggestions regardless of whether you’re actually close to full.
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The tool isn't even brand new. It seems to be something Google has been quietly testing for months. About six months ago, a Reddit user spotted it, which was the first public sign that the company was experimenting with this mechanic, even though it wasn’t widely available.
It also doesn't seem to be a random idea that the company came up with overnight. Seven years ago, a Redditor actually suggested the concept of a swipe-to-delete system for Photos. It never existed officially at the time, but the idea stuck around in the community.
