About four years ago, I began a grand experiment on the way I store my photos online.

In addition to backing up photos to my paid Microsoft OneDrive storage, I also started using Google Photos. The service was free, so there was no risk in checking it out, and Google was promising advanced features such as face recognition to sort through photos. I was curious to see whether I’d prefer Google’s system over my obsessively-curated OneDrive library.

In hindsight, I was foolish to think there’d be any contest. While I still back up my photos in OneDrive, I haven't bothered sorting them since 2017. And when I actually want to look at old pictures, Google Photos is my first and only stop. Google was correct in predicting that our photo libraries were becoming too big to manage on our own, and that we’d need help from AI to sift through everything.

Having mentioned Google Photos in a couple of recent deal alert emails, I thought it’d be a good time to discuss why it’s worth using and how to make the most of it.

Setting up Google Photos

Like other photo backup solutions, Google Photos can automatically save any pictures you take on your phone. Just install the iOS or Android app (the latter is most likely installed already), then turn on "Back up & sync" as part of the setup process.

You can save an unlimited number of photos and videos by choosing "high quality" instead of "original." The former option uses some barely-perceptible compression and limits photo resolution to 16 megapixels, which should be fine for printing up to 16 inches by 10 inches. The size limits mainly come into play if you're shooting 4K video (video quality is limited to 1080p resolution) or importing photos from a nice DSLR. If you choose "original," anything you save will count towards Google Drive storage, which is shared between other services such as Gmail and Google Docs, and your 15 GB of free storage won't go far.

For photos that are on your computer, the Google Photos app for Windows and Mac can back them up as well. It can also automatically grab photos from a digital camera when you hook it up over USB or plug in an SD card.

One word of warning for iPhone users: After you’ve set up the app, you’ll want to open it every few days or so while you’re on a Wi-Fi network to make sure it’s backing up photos properly. Limitations in iOS can prevent backups from happening if you leave the app alone for too long.

Searching and sorting

Once you’ve started backing up photos, Google will begin recognizing faces—including pets—which you can look up through the search bar at the top of the app. Google doesn’t actually know the names of the faces it’s recognizing, so you’ll have to tap on each face and select "Add a name" if you want to search for those people by name later. You can also search for locations, dates, objects (such as "food"), and media types (such as "videos" or "selfies.")

In most cases, searching or scrolling to a specific date are the best ways to look up old photos, but you can also create albums by highlighting a photo and pressing the "+" button that pops up. Press and hold on any photo to begin highlighting, or hold down your finger and drag it to highlight lots of photos at once.

Sharing and saving

Sharing is one of Google Photos’ strongest features. Once you’ve created an album, you can share it with other people and invite them to add their own pictures. Just hit the "..." button while viewing any album, select "Options," then flip on the "Share" toggle. You can then decide whether to make the album collaborative or only include your own photos.

From this same menu, you’ll also notice an option to automatically add photos of specific faces. This is where Google Photos really distinguishes itself from other photo storage options, as it can automatically update albums over time with fresh pictures of family members, friends, and pets.

Google Photos also has a special sharing feature for spouses or other trusted partners, which you can access from the "Shared" tab. This lets you see any photos the other person takes—or just photos of specific faces—and optionally add them to your library. My wife and I use this feature to make sure we’re both seeing the same pictures of our kids.

Editing and deleting

Editing with Google Photos can get a little tricky, especially on an iPhone or on Android phones that have their own photo gallery apps. Unless you edit photos within the Google Photos app—rather than from your phone’s regular gallery—those changes won’t sync to Google Photos once the picture is already uploaded. On Android, you can work around this by using the Google Camera app, which defaults to Google Photos when you want to edit pictures, but on an iPhone, you’ll just have to remember to open Google Photos for editing.

The good news is that Google Photos can help you clear up storage space regardless of which phone you’re using. In the app, hit the menu button in the top-left corner, then select "Free up space." Google Photos will identify all the pictures it’s already backed up, then offer to delete them from your phone.

Photo frame time

Google Photos really started clicking for me last year, when I bought a Lenovo Smart Display. Like other Google Assistant devices, it can respond to voice commands for music, timers, and more, but when it’s not actively in use, it can display albums from Google Photos on its 10-inch screen. Set it up with an album that’s automatically pulls in pictures of specific faces, and you’ll have a picture frame that’s always up to date. (Google’s Nest Hub does the same thing, but on a smaller screen.)

More quick tips

• When someone shares an album with you, it won’t show up in your album list automatically. Find it in the "Shared" tab, then hit the "..." menu button and select "Show in albums" to make it part of your album collection. You can also tap the cloud icon to add photos to your full library, where they’ll appear alongside your own pictures.
• For old print photos, Google’s PhotoScan app (for iOS and Android) can digitize, crop, and upload them quickly.
• The app’s Assistant section can automatically create albums, montages, animations, and more.
• From that same section, try making your own Collages and Animations with the buttons at the top of the screens. Google’s AI isn’t always so great at it.

Why not to use Google Photos

Although I’ve been a happy Google Photos user for the last four years, it’s not the best option for everyone.

The best alternative is Apple’s iCloud Photos service, which can automatically back up photos from an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Windows PC. It offers face recognition like Google Photos, and it avoids the editing issues and background uploading limitations that Google Photos has to deal with as a third-party iPhone app.

Apple’s solution also raises fewer privacy concerns, because the company isn’t primarily in the ads business like Google. While Google has said that it doesn’t use Photos for ad targeting, the company also hasn’t guaranteed that this won’t change, and its motivations for offering free photo storage have always been murky. Apple, by contrast, has a clear business model: If you store more than 5 GB of in iCloud--including phones--you must pay for it.

For me, though, the practical upsides of Google Photos have won out over the potential downsides. Unlike iCloud Photos, it can update albums on the fly with multiple faces, and it's better at sharing those albums with other people. And when I'm in the kitchen, caught looking at a then-and-now comparison shot of my son or daughter on the Smart Display, the service suddenly seems invaluable.

Got questions about managing your digital photos? Send me an email and I'll do my best to answer them.
 

Last week, Spotify released a new music app called Stations in the United States after testing it out in Australia. Instead of presenting you with endless listening options, the app presents a small list of internet radio stations, then lets you create your own based on any artist, genre, or mood. Stations is a lot simpler than the main Spotify app, and reminds me of Pandora before it started larding on its own on-demand music and podcast features.

Spotify Stations also introduces one neat idea that Pandora lacks: If you switch to another station on your list, then switch back to your original station, the app will resume the song you’d been listening to. That makes the whole concept feel a bit more like radio, letting you flip between stations until you’ve settled on a song that you like.

The app is free to use on iOS and Android. If you want to avoid ads and get unlimited skipping through tracks, you’ll need a $10 per month Spotify Premium subscription.
 

Apple’s big news: Last week, Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company announced new software features for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and more. Most of these features won’t arrive until the fall, so I’m not going to bother with a deep dive just yet, but here are the highlights:

Sign in with Apple is a button that will show up alongside the "Login with Facebook" and "Sign in with Google" options that appear in many apps today. It’ll spare you from having to create yet another password when you want to use a new app, but unlike with Facebook’s and Google’s login buttons, Apple’s won’t share any personal data with the app developer. It’ll also let you create a random email address that acts as an intermediary between the developer and your real email address, so if you stop using the app, you can delete the random address, and the developer won’t be able to contact you. Apple says it will also release a web version of its sign-in button, allowing it to work on Windows and Android.

iPad OS is the new name for Apple's tablet software, which the company now recognizes as distinct from iOS on iPhones. Multitasking is a major focus now, and in the fall you’ll be able to run a single app in two side-by-side windows, so you can edit two Word documents at once, reference old emails while composing new ones, compare two sets of notes, and so on. The iPad will even support external mouses, ostensibly as an accessibility feature.

iOS 13 will have lots of little improvements throughout, but I’m looking forward to dark mode and a built-in gesture keyboard. Apple also says it will block apps from sneakily inferring your location from non-GPS signal, such as nearby Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

The Mac Pro is a $6,000-and-up desktop tower computer that is almost certainly not for you, unless you’re a professional in film, game development, or other creative industries. An accompanying 6K HDR display will cost $5,000—plus another $1,000 for the stand it rests on.

I rounded up more of the news over at Fast Company, and I'm looking forward to digging in with tips and advice when these features arrive in the fall.

The next wave of laptops: I recently started thinking about buying a new laptop to replace my five-year-old Surface Pro 3, but after reading about Intel’s 10th generation Core processors, I’ve decided to wait it out until they start showing up in laptops later this year. Intel currently supplies the processors in nearly 90 percent of laptops, including all MacBooks.

The 10th-gen processors will be a major upgrade, using a new manufacturing process that Intel originally planned to launch in 2016, and laptop makers will have a lot more room to boost battery life, increase performance, or create thinner and lighter designs. As an example, Dell says its next XPS 13 laptop will be 2.5 times faster than its predecessor and will have nearly twice the battery life, according to Gizmodo. It will also have a screen that flips around into tablet mode. Those 2-in-1 designs usually add a lot of weight and bulk, but the next XPS 13 will only be 0.2 pounds heavier and 0.05 inches thicker than the current non-convertible design.

I don’t want to discourage you from buying a laptop if you absolutely need one, but be aware that much better laptops should be just around the corner. At the very least, consider holding out until prices on today’s laptops start collapsing.

Smart clocks galore: Over at Fast Company, I reviewed the Lenovo Smart Clock, which has a 4-inch screen and responds to Google Assistant voice commands. Setting alarms and playing music by voice is pretty nice, but it's also complicated to use in some ways, and I had issues getting it to execute smart home routines properly. Although Google told me back in January that the goal with these devices is to keep you from needing a smartphone by your bedside, I found that the Smart Clock is not up for the task just yet. I suggest waiting for a deal on Google's Home Hub display (now called the Nest Hub), which routinely sells for less than the Smart Clock's $80 asking price.

Not to be outdone, Amazon has released the Echo Look 5, an Alexa device with a 5-inch screen. It should perform similar duties as the Lenovo Smart Clock, though I haven't tried it yet.

Deleting Alexa commands: Speaking of Amazon, the company is making new overtures toward privacy for its Alexa voice assistant. You can now ask Alexa to delete anything you've said on a given day, and you'll soon be able to delete the last thing you said using voice commands as well.

But as Gizmodo notes, setting up voice deletion is needlessly complicated. After visiting this page while signed into your Amazon account, you must select "Review Voice History," then toggle on "Enable deletion by voice." Unlike Google, which now lets you auto-delete search data, Amazon isn't offering a way to automatically delete old recordings on a rolling basis.
 

Tired of toting around too many cables? Anker's Powerline II 3-in-1 Cable has interchangeable tips for Micro-USB, USB-C, and Lightning, so it can charge iPhones, Android phones, Kindles, Nintendo Switches, and more. And unlike some cheaper 3-in-1 charging cables on the market, it can also transfer data.

It's normally $18, but Amazon has it for $11.24 when you use the code ANKER3IN1 at checkout. Keep in mind you'll still need a power adapter to plug it into an outlet; it'll work with any adapter with a full-sized USB port.
 

Here’s a trick that every Windows user should know: When you need to compare two documents, or reference one program while working in another, just drag the window over to either edge of your screen. The program will resize to fill half your screen when you let go of the cursor, and you can select another program to fill the other half. Resize the two windows by clicking and dragging the vertical bar that runs between them.

Mac users can enter split-screen mode by pressing and holding the green button on the top-left corner of any window, then dragging it over to either side of the screen. Exit this mode by moving your cursor to the top of the screen, then pressing the green button again when it appears.