Google announced that Google Photos users can now view the 2025 Recap. This feature is similar to Spotify Wrapped, which summarizes unforgettable photo moments for users in the past year, accompanied by graphic effects, statistics and other content. American users will also experience intelligent highlight extraction based on the Google Gemini large model for the first time this year. The system will automatically identify the user’s interests and representative memories of the year.
Google Photos Recap will be launched as early as 2024 and is intended to follow the trend of data-driven annual reviews, such as those provided by music streaming and "time machine" applications. In 2025, this feature further becomes Gemini’s testing ground: the model will understand the context of the photo, determine the user’s “main line love of the year” and four other highlight themes that “make this year special” and present them in Recap.
The annual review also includes a number of photo statistics, such as the total number of photos taken throughout the year, the most common people, and this year's new "total selfies" and other indicators. Users can manually hide specific people or photos and then regenerate the Recap to get an updated version filtered for sensitive content.
Google Photos has also strengthened the ability to share retrospective content: photos and memories in Recap can be easily shared to social media or other platforms, and has been newly integrated with the video editing application CapCut. Users can export Recap to CapCut with one click and use the templates provided by Google Photos for further secondary creation. There will also be a new carousel area at the end of the review, containing short videos, photos and collage content, designed for sharing in group chats or social platforms, including a one-click option to post directly to WhatsApp status.
If users don’t see Recap automatically, they can actively request it at the top of the Google Photos app; it will remain within the app throughout December and can be found again at the end of the Memories carousel or in a pinned location on the Collections tab. In addition, Google also plans to launch a series of 2025 theme highlight content throughout the month of December to provide users with a richer annual memory review experience.