Google Photos is readying tools to make better highlight reels

Google Photos is picking up some new tricks to make it easier to create more expressive highlight videos. The app can already splice together clips around a certain theme to make short-form videos about your own life, and now, we’ve found evidence that that capability is expanding.

Experimenting with version 7.50 of the Google Photos app on Android, we managed to enable an updated version of the highlight video editor. This new iteration comes with a bunch of new templates that include pre-selected music, as well as the option to add custom text overlays.

Currently, when creating a highlight video in Google Photos, the process starts with searching for photos and videos containing specific people or things. Once the change we’ve uncovered rolls out, the first step will be choosing a template that comes with its own format and music.

We were able to access template options like “Fall vibes,” “Trip recap,” and “Hobbies.” Templates will presumably vary based on things like time of year and the content in your own Photos library. Music selection for these templates isn’t limited to royalty free stock tunes — we saw templates that featured tracks like Naughty by Nature’s Hip Hop Hooray and Breathe by Michelle Branch.

You’re also able to add text to highlight videos. Templates come with canned text that seems tuned to social media feeds (“core memory unlocked;” “When the festivities are lit! 🎇”), but you’re able to customize the text overlay to say whatever you want.

These changes haven’t rolled out to users yet, but we were able to activate them in the latest Google Photos release. That being the case, you can probably expect to see highlight video templates in Google Photos on your own devices soon.