Google Photos will launch new quick ‘chip’ toolbar for text-based images

Google Photos looks to be developing a new chip toolbar UI to aid in the use of Lens and other image editing tools with text-based photos.
SIA Team
March 14, 2022

Google Photos looks to be developing a new chip toolbar UI to aid in the use of Lens and other image editing tools with text-based photos.

The chip toolbar or chip group shows most often while viewing images like screenshots or those with highly visible text, and is mostly useful for quickly accessing regularly used features. 

If you open an image with a big amount of text, you’ll receive a floating toolbar with Google Lens, “Copy text,” “Listen,” “Crop,” and “Markup” chips, so you don’t have to go into another deeper menu within the Photos app for Android or ios.

Given how frequently Google modifies and tunes app and service interfaces, this chip toolbar is most likely part of a larger A/B test for the Photos UI, as it makes sense to offer contextual tools for photos with a lot of text, such as screenshots.