About 50 percent of my photo album is receipts. That is, screenshots of everything I consider even mildly interesting. Whether it’s Uber drivers who never seem to be getting closer, hot tea from my friend’s Instagram Stories or unfathomable email threads, my gallery is full of unexplainable internet detritus. Best of all, just from viewing their thumbnails, I can never know where exactly a specific image is, because walls of text all look the same from afar. So when Google announced its new Pixel Screenshots app at its Made By Google event today, I was excessively excited.
The Screenshots app launches alongside the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and uses Gemini AI to help locate specific images. After you grant the app access to your photos, the AI will not only ingest files it thinks are screenshots, but also start identifying what’s within each picture.
On the home page, you’ll see a row at the top called “Collections,” with a series of pre-organized snaps like “Gift Ideas,” “Boots” or “Places to visit.” These can be curated by yourself or suggested by the system.
Below this row is a grid of all your most recent captures, and at the bottom is a search bar and a Plus symbol next to it. Pressing that symbol will let you either launch the camera or import a photo from your album. This is helpful for pictures you’ve taken of real-world signs that contain information you want Gemini AI to help remember.
Tapping each screenshot in this app will expand the image and bring up a title, summary and buttons based on its contents. These are all AI-generated, so if you’re looking at a picture of a music festival’s Instagram post about upcoming dates, the title might say “Lollapalooza headline acts” with buttons to add specific events from that picture to your calendar. If you’ve pulled up an image of a restaurant’s website, then Screenshots might offer shortcuts to call the shop or navigate to the business address via Maps.
From the home page, you can either type into the search bar or tap the microphone icon in it and ask Google for things like “What was Sam’s WiFi password?” or “How much do I owe Cherlynn?” The app will scour your gallery and not only return images with possibly relevant info, but also attempt to answer your question up top. In the demo I saw at a recent hands-on event, a Google rep asked the app “When do the tickets for the festival go on sale?”
Screenshots responded almost instantly by…