Google’s Chrome team is readying a method for adding the Google Photos Memories feature to your new tab page UI.
For clarity, we’re not talking about changing your new tab page background image. Or about otherwise displaying Google photos in a full-screen fashion on the new tab page. In Google Photos, Memories is a feature that pools images from a date, date range, or of a subject.
Those are shown in custom, album-style image galleries that you can navigate. And those galleries are in the works to be added in their own dedicated card-based UI on the new tab page. Google may or may not allow background cycling later on. But that’s not what this feature is.
Regardless, that feature is now available in the Stable Channel for some. But only if you know where to look and are willing to risk potential performance degradation to enable it. And, of course, that’s exactly what this guide is here to examine. So, without further ado, let’s dig in.
This requires a flag setting, for now
Now, for the time being, this isn’t a full-fledged or fully-rolled-out feature. So setting your Chrome new tab page to display Google Photos memories requires an extra step.
Namely, you’ll need to dive into Chrome’s experimental settings and turn the feature on. That also means that there’s a chance that using this feature will negatively impact your browser performance. Or cause other, unexpected problems. And, of course, that also means that not everybody will necessarily be able to use this feature just yet. It didn’t, for example, work on some of our Chromebooks, used for this first part of the guide’s sample images.
Additionally, this won’t work on mobile just yet — or, in some cases, additional flags may be needed. Although it could potentially be added under the same flag — or a different one — later on. For now, you’ll need to follow these steps on a desktop platform. Whether that’s Chrome OS, Windows, Mac, or somewhere else.
- Open up Google Chrome — on a desktop platform such as Windows, Linux, Mac, or Chrome OS
- In the URL Omnibox, type “chrome://flags” to navigate to the experimental settings page
- The experiments page has its own search bar near the top of the UI. Use that to search for “NTP”
- In the results, you’ll need to enable two flags, using their associated drop-down menu. Namely, by switching them to “Enabled.” Those are “NTP Modules” and “NTP Photos Module”
- Use the “Relaunch” button which appears along the bottom of the UI to restart Chrome. You may need to restart Chrome more than once, as is sometimes the case with experimental features. In the case of Chrome OS, the button will restart the entire OS. But that process should only take a few seconds, at most
Once enabled, here’s how to set Google Photos to your Chrome new tab page
Prior to continuing, it’s worth noting that we’ve used one of Google’s alternative Photos Memories — labeled “fake memories 4” on the Chrome Flags page on Windows — for our sample images below. So what’s seen below isn’t what you’ll see for your Memories cards. You’ll see your own photos. Organized neatly just as the Google Photos app and web UI organizes them.
Regardless, the process for seeing those photos in action on the new tab page will be similar enough to make no difference.
- Open up a new tab in Google Chrome
- Scroll down to the newly-added card UI labeled “From your Google Photos”
- Select the option to “See memories”
- The card UI will change to show you albums created in Google Photos for the Memories feature. These are the images typically placed along the top bar of the UI online and in the Photos app. Specifically, those memories that are organized by date or subject matter
- You can now click or tap on any of those albums directly from your new tab page UI to view the memories Google Photos is serving up
- Conversely, a tap or click on the three-dot menu on the Memories card will allow you to “Hide your memories for today” if you’d rather not see them on any given day. Or to stop showing memories, or to access the new tab page card settings, as shown in the images below. You’ll have to access the Memories feature in Google Photos itself if you want to manage individual memories to stop or allow those showing
2021-12-04 15:05:09