How to See When and Where a Photo Was Taken From Within a Google Photos Memory

Photo: Kicking Studio (Shutterstock)

Google Photo’s Memories are one of the fun consequences of handing our photo collections over to AI; the feature groups photos and videos together to give you a unique look at a certain day, time of year, or event in your life. The only problem with this feature—in the past, anyway—was that you needed to leave the Photos memory and find the picture in your library to refresh your memory about simple facts like when and where you took it.

Memories now lets you view information for individual photos

Google has quietly updated its Memories feature to allow users to see any individual photo’s expanded information from within the memory itself. That includes things like the date and time the photo was taken; where you took the photo; the people in the photo; how large the file is; as well as camera information, like f-stop, shutter speed, the type of lens used, and ISO.

All this information was always accessible when looking at a photo in your library, but was missing when part of a memory. Perhaps Google thought people weren’t interested in this expanded information, considering Memories is ostensibly more about the overall slideshow experience. Thankfully, the company sees things differently now.

How to see photo information in a Google Photos memory

To check out this expanded information while viewing a memory, swipe up on the photo in question, or tap on the three dots in the bottom right. When you do, you’ll reveal a menu featuring any and all of the data noted above, if applicable. For example, you won’t see location information if the photo doesn’t have any to begin with.

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A portion of the information you might see on your photo.
Screenshot: Jake Peterson

Don’t worry; the other options that used to be available when swiping up on a photo are still here, but have been rolled into this new menu; you’ll find View day, Order photo, and Hide at the top of the menu (and Canvas print when tapping Order photo), while Memories settings are at the bottom of the menu. 

At this time, the ability to view photo information in Memories seems to be Android-exclusive (sorry iPhone users). It isn’t clear when Google dropped the new feature, but, according to Android Police, it seems to have arrived around the Photos version 5.53.0.388724750 update.

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Jake Peterson