Like the original Chromecasts that came before it, the latest model with its Google TV operating system has the ability to display your pictures from Google Photos. However, the Google Photos ambient screensaver on Chromecast has oddly just lost the dates and locations that showed along with the pictures.
On former Chromecast models and the new one, the Google Photos screensaver would show the current time on one side of the screen, putting information about the photo itself on the left. That information would include the album name, the date the photo was taken, and the location the photo was taken, if those details are available.
In a quiet update, Google has apparently removed those bits of data from the Google Photos ambient screensaver on the new Chromecast. The change, spotted on Reddit and which we’ve confirmed on our own devices, doesn’t come with any settings to bring the information back either. Previously, this information could be manually removed by turning off the “Personal Photo Data” option in the device’s settings from the Google Home app, but even with the option turned on, we’re no longer seeing the data.
This could be an A/B test, of course, and we’ve reached out to Google to see if that is the case. Notably, this change doesn’t seem exclusive to Chromecast, but is also happening on other Android TV models.
In all reality, this is a fairly minor change, but having that data quickly available is certainly handy when the photos are constantly showing on your TV. Hopefully, this is just a test, and in the future, users will at least have the option to choose whether or not to have this information shown.
More on Google TV:
- Google TV ‘kids’ profiles’ arrive on Chromecast this month w/ parental controls, time limits
- Google TV integrates with over 30 streaming services, here’s the full list
- Netflix directory comes back to Chromecast with Google TV, still limited
Author: Ben Schoon
Source: 9TO5Google
