Pixel Camera update may have killed this handy sharing feature

Google introduced a Social Share shortcut to the Pixel Camera app back in 2019’s Pixel 4 series. This sharing menu would pop up immediately after taking a photo on your Pixel phone, enabling quicker sharing of your snaps. Now, it looks like this option has disappeared with the latest app update.

9to5Google reports that the Pixel Camera 9.9 update (version 9.9.106.767010485.16) doesn’t have the Social Share shortcut. I can confirm that this feature is completely missing on my Pixel 7 Pro after updating to this version.

This was a useful feature in theory, as the shortcut would appear for a few seconds after you captured a photo and let you quickly share it to your desired app. Tapping the upward arrow would also reveal more apps to share the photo with.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t remember the last time I used the Social Share shortcut. The feature was enabled on my phone, but I always thought it looked unpolished, with the app’s icon partially obscured. It also didn’t help that Social Share reportedly dropped WhatsApp support. Nevertheless, I hope Google returns to this concept in the future as it saves users a few seconds. However, I would like to see a more refined UI.

This update was apparently supposed to include Google’s education hub. This is effectively a supercharged version of the camera app tutorials seen on phones from several other brands, allowing you to tap a question mark icon in various modes to get more info and examples. However, we’re not seeing this inclusion just yet.

In any event, we’ve asked Google for more info about the missing Social Share shortcut and whether this menu is coming back. We’ll update our article with Google’s answer as soon as the company responds to our email.