Google Photos' big redesign began rolling out about a week ago and with it came a new map view, a fresh fan-shaped icon, and a three-tab design. What we missed in that new UI was the addition of one feature we've been wanting to see on Android for a while now: the ability to see our most recently uploaded pics, even if they were taken years ago.
Photos sorts pics in a reverse-chronological order by the date they were taken in, so your most recent snaps are always on top. This works well most of the time, until you decide to upload a bunch of old pics (from your standalone camera, older phones, a computer, etc...). When you do that, and if the images have proper EXIF data, they'll be buried in your Photos library according to the date they were taken on.
To solve that, Photos has a Recently Added search filter on the web, which has been missing on Android for years. Photos' product lead, David Lieb, said last year that the filter should make its way to Android, and it took its sweet time to do so. Now, with the latest redesign, it's here.
Simply go to the Search tab, scroll down past people and places and things, and you'll see Recently Added under Your Activity. Open it to find your pics sorted according to the date they were uploaded in, which makes it easy to edit, share, or group them in a new album, no matter when they were taken. Now if only we'd get the option to edit photos' time and location in the app, it'd be perfect.
The new interface in Photos hasn't rolled out to everyone yet though. You need to be running at least v5.0 of the app (you can grab the latest from APK Mirror), but there's also a server-side component that enables the UI for users. If you're not one of the lucky ones, you'll have to wait before you can try this out.
