Google backtracks on annoying restriction for Google Photos partner sharing

Google Photos introduced a controversial change back in November and now it seems it's changed its mind. It has been discovered to be reversing a change that removed partner sharing for screenshots, downloads, and photos from third-party apps.

Google Photos has this nice feature called partner sharing which was launched back in 2017. What it does is basically allow you to automatically share your library of images with selected people. Strangely enough, in November an update to the app made it so you could no longer share screenshots, downloads, and photos from third-party apps - something you were able to do since partner sharing was introduced.

So, with this change, the stuff that was shared using partner sharing was only photos and videos coming from your camera. But now, it seems Google is reversing this decision.


At the moment, the feature is not yet available to the public and is expected to come with a future Google Photos update. When it becomes available to everyone, it will be switched off by default, which means you'll have to manually enable it to share other content.

The setting "Include content from other Android apps" should be in the Google Photos settings when it becomes available.

I always get somewhat disappointed when a feature that worked perfectly fine and didn't bother anyone gets removed, so I'm quite pleased by the fact that Google is backtracking on this decision. Although we don't know when the update will come, it's very nice to know that Google is working on it. Hopefully, it will arrive soon.