Google Photos change tries to save you from accidental edits

Google Photos and its editor have been in a near-constant state of change over the past couple of years, and it doesn’t look like things are settling down just yet. The latest tweak changes how you interact with some of the app’s most powerful tools, and while it looks like a bit of a regression in some respects, it aims to make the editor less frustrating to use.

In a new post on its Help pages, Google says it’s updating how users access editing tools on Android. Features like Move, Erase, and Reimagine will no longer activate when you tap, circle, or scribble directly on an image. Instead, you’ll need to open the editor and select them from the tools menu or search for them by name.

According to Google, the change is intended to reduce accidental edits and improve performance. Anyone who’s ever triggered an editing tool by mistake will probably see the upside. At the same time, it does remove one of the more direct and intuitive ways to make quick edits.

Google’s Photos editor has undergone a major redesign and even shown signs of partial reversals over the last 12 months. This latest update isn’t a dramatic overhaul, but it’s the kind of change you’ll notice pretty quickly if you rely on those gesture-based shortcuts. Whether it feels like an improvement will likely come down to how often you found yourself making edits you didn’t mean to in the first place.