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Google Allo could get new ‘quick selfie’ feature, backup & restore, ability to add stickers to photos, more [Video + Gallery]

Google Allo has received countless updates since launch, adding a variety of features — most of them involving stickers in some way. Now, we’ve managed to enable some features that Google is actively working on within Allo that haven’t yet been enabled. These include a new button for quickly capturing a selfie and the ability to add stickers as decoration on photos…

“Quick selfie”

The first feature is pretty self-explanatory. As you can see below, the feature — in its current form, at least — adds a new camera icon to the right of the text entry field (currently, the microphone icon that you hold to record a voice memo is the right-most option).

To activate this “quick selfie” feature, you simply tap the camera icon and tap again on the shutter button that appears in the small circular frame. From there, you’ll be given the option to either send the photo to the person on the other end of the current conversation, or trash it. The selfie then appears in the standard message feed formatted as a small circle.

Backup and restore

We also found evidence within the app that Google is working on a backup and restore feature, but that’s all we know for now. Assumably this would be for backing up and restoring your conversations, but we weren’t able to enable it at this point.

<boolean name=”BackupRestore__enable_backup_restore” value=”false” />

More stickers!

Another feature that Google is working on in Allo that hasn’t been enabled is the ability to add stickers atop photos you take — a la Snapchat. There will likely be a new sticker button in a future version of Allo that lets you pick between the various stickers that you can already send in normal chats.

Incognito in group chats

We also found evidence of Incognito coming to group chats. We also have yet to be able to enable this feature, but it looks the ability to go incognito as a group is coming.

<boolean name=”Incognito__enable_group_incognito” value=”false” />


It’s worth noting that while these features are currently in the works, there’s no guarantee that Allo will actually receive them in a future update. They’re not available in the public-facing version of Allo for a reason (they aren’t done yet), and since this is Google, it’s possible — and perhaps even likely — that they won’t ever actually make their way into the app. But they might.

We’re still digging, so stay tuned as we find more in Allo and other apps.

@EvoWizz contributed to this article.

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.


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