Google Photos Adds Document Viewing to the Web

After rolling out some tweaks to Material 3, the Google Photos web app is adding the Documents section that’s already available on Android and iOS.

Documents was introduced to the mobile app in November, and you’ll now find it in the library next to Favorites, Albums, Utilities, Archive, Locked Folder, and Trash. A drop-down menu displays three top collections and a link to “View all documents.”

As with the mobile carousel, this can include “automatic albums” — which offer “archiving after 30 days” — for screenshots, books and magazines, event information, identity, notes, payment methods, receipts, recipes and menus, and social media.

You can also access this network by searching for “Documents” or directly on Photos.google.com/u/0/documents.

This addition to Google Photos on the web is a great evolution that mirrors how people take photos of important documents, with the Gemini-powered Ask Photos feature in the future serving as another way to access this information conversationally. Meanwhile, Google Wallet is also adding a feature that lets you save important documents as passbooks.