Receipts make up about 50 percent of the photo album. That is, screenshots of everything that I find somewhat interesting. Whether it’s Uber drivers who never show up, hot tea from my friend’s Instagram stories, or inexplicable email threads, my gallery is full of inexplicable internet detritus. Best of all, looking at their thumbnails, I can never tell where a particular image is because the walls of text look the same from afar. So I was super excited when Google announced the new Pixel Screenshots app today at its Made By Google event.
The Screenshots app launches with the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro Fold and uses Gemini AI to find specific images. Once you give the app access to your photos, the AI will not only accept files it considers to be screenshots, but will also begin identifying the contents of each image.
At the top of the homepage, you’ll see a row called “Collections” with pre-arranged images such as “Gift Ideas,” “Boots,” or “Pick-ups.” These can be controlled by yourself or suggested by the system.
Below that row is a grid of all your recent downloads, and below that is a search bar with a Plus icon next to it. Clicking on this icon will either launch the camera or import a photo from your album. This is useful for pictures you take of real-world landmarks that contain information you want the Gemini AI to remember.
Tapping on each screenshot in this app will expand the image and bring up a title, summary, and buttons based on its content. They’re all built with AI, so if you’re looking at a picture of a music festival’s Instagram post about upcoming dates, the caption might say “Lollapalooza headline acts” with buttons to add specific events from that picture to your calendar. If you’ve taken a picture of a restaurant’s website, then Screenshots can offer shortcuts to call the store or navigate to the business address via Maps.
From the home page, type or tap the microphone icon in the search bar and Google “What was Sam’s WiFi password?” you can ask things like or “How much do I owe Cheryl?” The app will scan your gallery and not only return images with relevant information, but also try to answer your question above. In a demo I saw at a recent hands-on event, a Google representative asked the app, “When do festival tickets go on sale?”
Screenshots responded almost immediately by taking a picture of the folk festival’s Instagram post, and a few seconds later showed the words, “Tickets for the festival go on sale on August 5th.” This example was particularly impressive because the screenshot listed multiple dates, one for the start of ticket sales and another for the start of the festival. From the same interface, the company representative was able to set a reminder for the Pixel 9 to buy tickets on time.
It’s kind of a coincidence that Google launched this program today also pays extra attention to organizing and filtering screenshots. My experience with either approach is currently extremely limited, but right now I’m slightly favoring Google’s Screenshots app. It feels like a more focused and thoughtful way to search for information and get help from AI, rather than having to wade through a million selfies in the Photos app on my iPhone while I’m trying to find a bank statement.
Using AI to make sense of our screenshots certainly feels like a smart thing to do, though there are privacy concerns. Microsoft should have done it already It was supposed to remember everything you did on your computer by taking a screenshot every few seconds. Google’s Screenshots app uses Gemini Nano, an on-device AI model for native processing, and the company says the feature won’t share your screenshots offline (except for backups you may already have connected via Google Photos).
The Pixel Screenshots app will be on the Pixel 9 family at launch, and the company has nothing to share about its wider availability at the moment. But based on how Google has launched and distributed apps like Recorder in the past, it’s likely that older Pixel devices will get screenshots as long as they’re well received by users.
