Credit: Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is testing a “Copy” button in the share sheet that lets users copy and paste images directly into other apps without downloading them first.
- The new sharing approach will avoid unwanted downloads by allowing users to paste full-resolution images with minimal compression directly into existing app messages.
- Additional UI changes include an updated Album screen design using Material 3 Expressive’s connected buttons pattern and tweaks to the Updates section that showcase recently changed albums.
As great as Google Photos is, there are still a few rough edges. While the app is great for backing up your photos, it’s not very good at sharing a single image from your library with another app. Users can either download an image they want to share or share it with other apps via the share sheet.
The share sheet approach is flawed because it presents the image as a new message in chat apps, so you can’t use it as a reply to an existing message, leaving most people with no choice but to download the image and then attach it as a reply. This method is slow, inconvenient, and leaves behind a copy of the image in your downloads.