Nat Taylor — Blog, Product Management & Tinkering

Google Photos Home Screen Album Shortcut

Published on Aug 29, 2020. Updated on

While Google Photos App for Android doesn’t natively offer home screen shortcuts, it does open photos.google.com links, which makes shortcuts possible, though cumbersome.

To make a Google Photos home screen shortcut to an album:

1. Go to https://photos.google.com in Chrome and open the album
2. Tap the Share icon, then “Copy Link”
3. Put your phone into “Airplane Mode”
4. Navigate to the album link from your clipboard
5. Chrome will display a “No Internet” page. From that page tap Chrome’s three-dot menu and select “Add to Home screen”
6. Name and place the shortcut.
7. Turn off “Airplane Mode”

That’s it! Now tapping that shortcut will open the album in the Google Photos app.