Google Photos has introduced a new “2024 Recap” feature, offering users a personalized visual summary of their year’s photographic highlights, mirroring the popular Spotify Wrapped format.
Rolling out globally, the Recap provides users with an AI-generated video compilation showcasing their most memorable moments and unique insights about their photo-taking habits. Users will receive a collection of memories that analyze their year through an innovative lens, revealing details like longest photo streaks, most photographed colours, and key people captured throughout 2024.
Select users in the United States can enhance their Recap with personalized AI-generated captions powered by Google Gemini. These captions will highlight what the AI determines as the two most significant moments of the user’s year, such as weddings or trips.
The feature requires users to enable the Face Groups setting, which uses facial recognition to identify and group similar faces. Throughout December, the Recap will be accessible in the Google Photos Memories carousel, with the option to share directly to social media and messaging platforms.
The recap offers unique insights into your year, including your longest photo streak, smile statistics highlighting who you smiled with most, your top photographed faces or “All Star Cast”, a color palette of the year, and even your top 3 “2024 vibes”. You can easily save and share these memories, which will remain pinned to your photos grid under December after the new year begins.
While the feature offers an entertaining year-in-review experience, Google acknowledges potential sensitivity around automatically surfacing memories. The company has implemented filters to avoid resurfacing potentially upsetting images and provides users with controls to hide specific people or time periods.
Users can access their Recap by opening the Google Photos app and looking for a notification indicating the feature is ready for viewing.
