Google unveiled a major new redesign for the Photos app on mobile last week, bringing a more simplified layout, a smarter ‘Memories’ feature, and more. While that update is slowly rolling out to all users, another feature that is beginning to make it to the Android version of the app is a nifty new mute button in the video player.
Spotted by folks over at AndroidPolice, the small yet useful icon allows users to quickly mute the video that is currently playing by tapping on it. Unsurprisingly, tapping on it again unmutes the video and sets the volume back to where it was left. The addition is useful for when users want to quickly mute any media, without having to change the volume for all media using the volume rocker. Some apps such as Samsung’s Gallery provide a way to unmute video previews, instead of providing it in the player itself.
The addition of this icon seems to be a server-side update since it is not tied to the redesigned app. Some users that are sporting the older version of the app have received the unmute icon, while those on the redesigned version still do not have it. It must be noted, however, that the mute option is not similar to the ability to remove audio completely from a video. That feature was spotted in the app"s teardown and will reportedly be a part of the video editing tools.
Considering that it is a minor feature, it shouldn’t be long till it makes it to all devices.