Google Home app gets redesigned ‘Photo Frame’ settings menu that adds a preview

Abner Li | Oct 31 2021 - 4:00 am PT

In addition to readying a new “Google Weather Frog” option for clock faces, the Home companion app now has a redesigned UI when choosing albums for your Nest Hub Photo Frame.

Instead of a grid of recent albums, you now get a carousel UI that somewhat matches the approach taken by the on-Smart Display settings menu. “Select family & friends, “Recent highlights,” and “Favorites” appear first, with your created albums showing up in reverse-chronological order after.

Selections are highlighted in blue with the ability to select as many as you want, though the previous top-right checkmark was clearer.

The bigger change is a secondary “Preview” carousel. You can keep on scrolling to see all the images that will eventually cycle through your Nest Hub. On iOS, an example time and weather mockup appears in the bottom-left corner. Google Home for Android just shows the pictures.

This redesign of Photo Frame settings rolled out to the Google Home app via a server-side update. It’s not clear when the new look was first introduced.

Meanwhile, Google looks to be tweaking the Home app in another way. On the 2nd-gen Nest Hub, “Display” settings have a different button design. Besides the corners being more rounded, the blue highlight/fill is dropped for gray. It’s vaguely more modern, while the Ambient EQ slider has lost its increment markers. This change does not appear for Hub Max preferences. Hopefully, this is part of the eventual Material You redesign.