Your Google Pixel already knows who that screenshot is for
Over the years, Android has focused on making actions easier and quicker to execute — like how the vast majority of us have moved togesture navigation. Or, for instance, when you take screenshots, Android gives you the option toedit, crop, or sharethem right away, without diving into the gallery app first. Today we’re looking at another improvement in this direction, asGoogle’s Pixel phonesnow try to guess the ideal recipients for screenshots you take.
After grabbing a screenshot, the preview usually appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen alongside buttons to share, edit, or capture more. Now, a new conversation widget is being added to the list — although you may need to scroll a bit to get to it.9to5Googlehas spotted this working, where it shows the suggested recipient’s avatar or profile picture, app badging, and the contact name in a pill-shaped button. Upon tapping, your screenshot is pasted in the text field of the specified app.
Although it isn’t entirely clearhow the share target is chosen, it seems to be influenced by recent notifications from messaging services. The app you were last using appears to play a role, so if your most recent notifications are from a WhatsApp chat with a specific person, Android is likely to suggest you send the screenshot to them. Google may be reasoning that you jumped away from that thread to take your screenshot, and would probably return to it to send the image — potentially saving you time if it gets the share target suggestion right. We wonder how accurate these might be when you’re multitasking or engaging in several conversations simultaneously.
So far we’ve seen reports of this appearing on Pixel phones running Android 12 after installing the latest update forAndroid System Intelligence(ASI) (version S.25), which may suggest the feature could be available for any device running Android 12. ASI is also responsible for Smart Actions in notifications and easier text selection across Android.
That said, we’ve also heard from a tipster who saw the feature in action last month on their Pixel running an Android 13 beta build. We couldn’t get it to work after updating ASI to the latest version on a similar device with Android 12, leading us to believe this could be tied to server-side switch rolling out gradually or an A/B test in progress. Since there doesn’t seem to be one sure-shot way to get this working immediately, we can only hope more Android users get access to this convenience soon.
Thanks:Eduardo
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