Google Photos has rolled out a “classic search” toggle for Ask Photos that delivers a big quality-of-life improvement.

This feature was first mentioned by Google in March, but it’s completely rolled out today according to a new community post: “You can now seamlessly integrate both classic and Ask Photos search experiences which makes it easier to shift between them based on your query.”

If you have “Ask Photos” enabled, the results page will show a new toggle at the top of the screen. Regular search is on the left and the AI offering at the right.

In our brief testing, this toggle can remain set to classic search across multiple simple, single-word queries. However, if you ask a more complex question (like “what’s my license plate?”), it switches back to Ask Photos and remains that way until you manually toggle. 

The change today appears to be how Google will show the toggle to users who don’t have Ask Photos enabled to encourage them to try the AI-powered experience.

• If you turn on Ask Photos: The app decides whether your search is best answered with Ask Photos or a classic search experience. To switch between results, at the top of your search results, toggle back and forth.
• If you haven’t turned on Ask Photos: You can still perform your standard searches as usual. At the top of your results, you may find a toggle to enable Ask Photos. When you toggle on, it’ll lead you to the onboarding and opt-in flow. Learn how to opt in to Ask Photos.

We’re seeing this rolled out on Google Photos for Android and iOS today.

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