Google Photos quietly downgrades partner sharing with this weird limitation

Google Photos is one of the best cloud-based photo backup tools. Google keeps improving the service with new filters, AI-powered search, editing tools, sharing options, and more. Google Photos also supports partner sharing, automatically providing your spouse or loved one access to all pictures and videos in your library. For reasons best known to Google, though, it has silently changed how the feature works, with the shared person now unable to see screenshots and pictures from other Android apps saved to your Google Photos library.

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As spotted by Tech-Issues Today, several Google Photos users on Reddit noticed that their partner could no longer view screenshots and images from other apps in their library. This change stems from Google quietly adjusting how partner sharing works, which appears to have gone live in late October. It has also updated the partner sharing support page to reflect this. There’s now a tip highlighting that “Photos from other apps on Android aren’t shared with your partner account.”

All screenshots on my Xiaomi 14 Ultra are stored inside DCIM/Screenshots and automatically backed up to Google Photos. My partner can no longer see such images, though this was not the case until a few weeks ago. This indicates Google is not filtering screenshots and photos from other apps based on the folder they are saved in but likely through their metadata.

Editing a screenshot and image shot by a third-party camera app by adding filters, tweaking its color, etc., making it visible to my partner.

No workaround is available for this Google Photos limitation yet

A Google employee working on Google Photos confirmed this change, saying it has been made to “better align with most users’ expectations.”

This change might be a big issue if you use a third-party camera app, including Instagram, to take pictures or videos. They will no longer be visible to your partner in Google Photos. It is unclear why Google made this weird change and why there’s no way to turn this functionality on/off.

For now, there does not appear to be an easy workaround to this Google Photos limitation. One solution shared by a Reddit user requires root access and Magisk but is too convoluted for most people.