The most important thing in my life is my family and friends, and I’ve found a way to personalize my Android homescreen with photo frames that show off my favorite people thanks to the fantastic widget option that comes with Google Photos (and don’t forget to change these settings in Google Photos to make it work better). Being able to display a specific frame for a specific person (or group of people) is unique to Android, and there’s nothing better than going back to your homescreen and seeing photos of your children, your partner, or even your pet.
The power of facial recognition
Organizes your photos by people and pets
Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf
For years, Google Photos has used its fantastic computer vision to identify faces of people (and pets) and let you organize them by person. To set this up properly, just go to your Google Photos app -> Search -> People & Pets. Here, Google will show you a collection of faces it has detected. What’s amazing about Google Photos face detection is that it even has the ability to track changes over time.
For example, I have a section for each of my children, which is magically comprised of all recent photos I’ve taken of them and even baby photos I took that barely resemble how they look today. Somehow, Google Photos is able to know that “baby Ben” and “six-year-old Ben” are the same, and they get organized by person. If you’re in People & Pets in Google Photos, you can actually scroll down past the faces you’ve already identified to see photos of people Google doesn’t have a name for and click “Add a name” to label them. To keep my Google Photos organized, I regularly go into this section and label faces of anyone Google hasn’t seen before, which helps to keep my library organized.
How to set it up
Google Photos is already organizing your library by face
Adding a Google Photos frame for a specific person or pet is easy. Just long press on your homescreen -> add widget -> Google Photos -> Pick People & Pets to bring up the picker which lets you select one or more person or pet. Another option is the Your Memories widget, which will randomly pick photos to display in case you want a little bit of everything. You can also choose from six frame styles so that you can get creative in how the photos are presented. And, with Android’s widget framework, the frames are resizable so you can get really creative in how they are displayed.
There is no limit to how many Google Photos widgets you can have, so I like to use several: my first homescreen usually has three photo frames, one for each of my children, and the second homescreen has a larger frame with my dog.
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Experiment with frame shapes
Get just the right look and feel
Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf
The two most common frame shapes are circle and square, but you can get creative with rectangles, squiggle outlines, and ovals. Shapes that have right angles, like squares and rectangles, give you more context in each widget, while the circle/oval/squiggle frames are more stylistic but cut off a lot of the image. For important images, like of your kids or partner, I like using a square. For more “fun” photos, you can experiment with untraditional sizes.
Resize frames and mix and match
Android’s widget framework is fantastic
Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf
It’s such a delight playing around with widgets on Android. As you resize various elements, any adjacent icons or widgets bounce around to allow everything to fit, or some elements will move to other homescreen pages. You probably already know this, but to resize any widget in Android, tap and hold the widget -> release until you see the resize handles -> resize how you want. The Google Photos widgets can be resized all the way down to a 1×1 shape, or can be expanded to fill an entire homescreen as long as there is enough room.
Give your kids, your partner, or your pet a spot on your homescreen
Replace app icons with photo frames
Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf
I love seeing my late grandmother on my homescreen. And each frame will refresh itself automatically so it always feels fresh and new. The widgets seem to randomly refresh with new photos. Here is a tip to get a Google Photos widget frame to force refresh in case you want to switch it up: tap on a widget photo, then go back to your homescreen.
Here is a tip to get a Google Photos widget frame to refresh: tap on a widget photo, then go back to your homescreen.
Giving your family a place on your homescreen is deeply meaningful
This is what personalization feels like
Credit: Brandon Miniman / MakeUseOf
There’s truly nothing better than utilizing Android’s customization tools to bring your family to your homescreen with the Google Photos people and pets frame widget, and there are a lot of other really useful Android widgets that deserve a spot on your homescreen. If you’re using a Pixel, you can take advantage of the beautiful visual design of Material You to further enhance how your Google Photos frames are presented.
