You know the drill: you snap a dozen photos of your latte, end up with three winners, and the rest? Blurry foam, awkward angles, or unintended photobombs. As much as we love to curate our digital scrapbooks, it’s easy for the clutter to pile up—and so is the pressure on your Google Photos storage quota. Before you find yourself shelling out for yet another Google One plan, Google might soon give you a helping hand: automatic suggestions for photos you might want to delete.
For casual photographers and memory hoarders alike, Google Photos feels like an infinite shoebox—until that shoebox starts costing money. Once you exceed your free 15 GB of Google storage shared across Drive, Gmail, and Photos, the platform nudges you toward a Google One subscription. And let’s face it: few of us relish the thought of hunting down duplicates, screenshots, and blurry shots one by one.
Android Authority recently uncovered code in the Google Photos Android app (version 7.35) that hints at an “assisted deletion” feature. The magic kicks in when you manually delete a batch of photos—let’s say ten or more at once. At that point, Google Photos will pop up a banner prompting you to “Clean up your library” by reviewing additional images the system thinks you might not need.
Once the feature flags flip on Google’s servers, you’ll see the suggestion prompt whenever you delete that threshold number of photos. You can then either review the AI-picked candidates—or toggle suggestions off entirely if you prefer the old-school “pick and choose” approach.
Under the hood, Google Photos already uses machine learning to power features like “Manage Storage,” which flags large videos, screenshots, and blurry shots that count against your quota. The new assisted deletion could take this further: scouring your library for near-duplicates, shots with closed eyes, or those accidental test snaps you never meant to keep. In other words, it’s not just about raw file size anymore; it’s about image quality and redundancy.
Imagine the AI quietly scanning your gallery in the background, then handing you a tidy shortlist of “maybe delete” images whenever you decide it’s time for a digital cleanup. It’s akin to having a virtual archivist saying, “Hey, remember these old screenshots from 2018?”—only less nosy and more helpful.
This feature is more than a convenience hack. By proactively surfacing low-value images, Google helps you avoid that dreaded storage-limit alert at the worst possible moment—like right before a big family trip or when you’re trying to capture your kid’s first steps. A little preventive decluttering can save you both time and money. Fewer needless photos means less frequent bumping up to a higher‑tier Google One plan. Plus, a leaner library is easier to navigate, share, and revisit.
As with any unreleased feature, everything is up in the air: the exact deletion threshold might change, the types of flagged images could expand or contract, and the rollout timeline is still unknown. We don’t yet know whether Google will let you customize the criteria (for example, ignoring screenshots or only targeting black‑and‑white photos), or if the suggestions will include items already in your trash folder. And since this tool lives in the Android APK for now, we can only speculate about an iOS counterpart.
Google’s reputation for user‑centric design suggests this won’t be a one‑and‑done experiment. We could soon see granular controls—letting you whitelist certain albums or setting “auto‑delete” rules for daily snapshots. And as on‑device AI capabilities grow, assisted deletion might even become instantaneous, nudging you the moment you take a forgettable shot.
Note: Feature discovered in Google Photos v7.35 APK teardown; not yet publicly available.
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