Google Photos' automatic facial tagging feature, which sorts images into albums based on the people in your photos, is definitely one of my favorite reasons to use the app.
However, while that feature itself is pretty cool, Google has, for some reason, never allowed users to manually tag people in photos within the app.
That's being addressed now with a new feature, rolling out in the app update, that will allow users to manually add tags to faces in images.
You can now tag people in photos in Google Photos
So the next time Google can't identify a person in your images, you can manually tag them to add the photo to your album.
However, as pointed out Android Police, which first reported the feature, this only works if Google Photos recognizes that there's a face in the image in the first place.
What this means is that if Google doesn't seem to think there's a face in your image, it still can't tag anyone in it.
The new feature is only useful if Google can recognize that there is a face in the image, but cannot identify whose face it is.
How to manually tag a face in Google Photos
Open Google Photos, find any photo with people or pets in it and swipe up or tap the button (three dots) at the top right. This displays the updated EXIF panel with the People section, recognized person avatars, and an edit icon (pencil) on the right.
If you don't see the pencil, the feature hasn't been implemented yet; and if you don't see the People header, Google hasn't detected any faces in that particular image.
Tap the edit icon and you'll come to a screen with the photo at the top, thumbnails of people tagged below it, and the faces that are available to add below it. Choose the untagged faces, either by tapping on the image or on the thumbnails.
You can add them to the group of an existing person or create a new one with the plus sign in the upper right.
So how often do you want to tag a person in an image manually?
Personally, my experience with auto-tagging people from Google Photos has been pretty good. And I haven't come across many instances where Google Photos hasn't recognized someone in a photo I took.
But how has your experience been? Let us know in the comments below.