Google Photos just got these killer upgrades for Android phones

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Google Photos on Android has finally caught up with iOS

Google Photos
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Google Photos has finally gained a suite of new video editing features for Android, months after they appeared on iOS.

The revamped UI offers a slew of editing options including the ability to crop video, tweak brightness and apply filters to clips — all of which have been available on iPhones since last summer. Still, the update is now live on Google Pixel and other Android phones, so you can head to the Play Store to make sure you're using the latest iteration.

To use the new features you simply need to open a video in the app and hit the edit button below. 

As well as the basic trimming tool, which was present before the update, Android users will now find a 'crop' tab, for manually cropping clips — or you can choose from a preset aspect ratio, which is helpful if you're posting to social media. You can also rotate the video and change the perspective of clips in this tab. 

'Adjust' lets you delve into the finer details, with options to tweak brightness, contrast, shadows, saturation, and more. There's quite the smorgasbord of editing options in this section of the app, so it's worth rifling through them all when you have time.

The 'filters' tab gives you the same options as those available for photos, so you'll be familiar with the likes of the ultra-bright 'Vivid' and the high-contrast black-and-white 'Vista' already. The final 'more' tab lets you draw on your video with the Markup tool, or open with a third-party editing app if you have one installed on your device.   

Google Photos is already a mainstay of our best photo editing apps list, but it's not yet made it onto our best video editing apps page. This update could change that, particularly when you consider that we also think it's one of the best photo storage sites.

That said, if you're reliant on Google Photos for cloud storage, bear in mind that the service will no longer offer free unlimited storage as of June 2021. Instead, users will be limited to just 15GB of storage per Gmail account to be shared across Drive, Gmail and Photos. 

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Shabana Arif
Shabana Arif

Shabana is T3's News Editor covering tech and gaming, and has been writing about video games for almost a decade (and playing them since forever). As well as contributing to Tom's Guide, she's had bylines at major gaming sites during her freelance career before settling down at T3, and has podcasts, streaming, and video content under her belt to boot. Outside of work, she also plays video games and should really think about expanding her hobbies.