For the purpose of accelerating the use of Lens and other image editing capabilities, specifically with text-based photos, Google Photos appears to be testing a new chip toolbar user interface.
The chip toolbar or chip group is mostly useful for quickly accessing frequently used controls, and it frequently appears while viewing screenshots or other images with clearly legible text. This new UI is by no means pervasive and, at least for now, seems to be a UI test, similar to most things in Google apps.
Update 04/21: The new chip toolbar now seems to have spread significantly more extensively after initially just being accessible to a small number of Android users, and it should be accessible to most of them when using Google Photos. When viewing screenshots with a lot of content, you might notice a Search inside screenshot option even though the options haven’t increased.
If you open an image with a lot of text, you’ll get a floating toolbar with Google Lens, Copy text, Listen, Crop, and Markup chips, which means you don’t need to enter another deeper menu within the Photos app on Android. Instead of having to go into the further Edit section or swipe up to directly access. This is most obvious in screenshots, but even pictures with text will provide a Copy text chip:
By tapping any of the choices, the corresponding part is immediately accessible. The persistent shortcut for every image you access in Google Photos already exists in the pinned toolbar, making the Lens shortcut rather unnecessary. It seems a little strange to have what amounts to two of the same shortcut in this newly introduced floating toolbar, however we’re not sure if this will change over time.
This chip toolbar is probably a part of a larger A/B test for the Photos UI, given that Google frequently adjusts and modifies app and service interfaces. Showing contextual tools for images like screenshots that are covered in text makes perfect sense. Additionally, people who are unfamiliar with the extra editing tools may pick up some new skills. Please let us know if you’ve encountered the same chips toolbar when using Google Photos in the comments section below.
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