How do you blur a bank account number out of a screenshot before sending it to someone? Until recently, Google Photos had no answer on Android, and you needed a separate app. That has changed. Google Photos now has a Redact tool in its Markup section that blurs or pixelates whatever you drag your finger across.
Why the Google Photos Redact tool is worth knowing about
Most people share sensitive images more often than they realize. A screenshot of a payment confirmation goes to a friend. A photo of an ID gets sent to a landlord. A boarding pass ends up in a group chat.
Each of those images usually carries more than the recipient needs. Account numbers, booking references, addresses and document numbers all ride along. A barcode on a boarding pass stays machine-readable long after you have posted it.
The usual workarounds were clumsy. You could crop, which often destroys the part of the image you actually wanted to share. You could scribble over the area with the marker tool, which works but looks messy.
The third option was installing a separate editor and handing it access to your photo library. That rather defeats the point of a privacy tool. Doing the job inside Google Photos removes that problem, since the app already holds your library.
The idea is not new to Android either. OnePlus has shipped a comparable feature under the same Redact name. What is new is having it in Google’s own gallery app, which has been picking up small quality-of-life changes lately, including a recent option to turn off the shimmer effect on Memories.
How to blur or pixelate sensitive details in Google Photos
Open the photo or screenshot you want to clean up, then go into its Markup tools. From there, the process is four steps.
- Tap the Redact pen icon.
- Choose your preferred style — Mosaic, Mosaic Light or Blur — and adjust the thickness to suit the image.
- Slide your finger over the sensitive areas you want to redact.
- Tap the checkmark to apply.
Thickness is the setting worth a second look before you start. On a dense screenshot, a thick brush swallows surrounding text you were trying to keep. On a large photo, a thin brush can leave slivers of the original showing at the edges of your stroke.
Mosaic or Blur: which to pick
The two Mosaic options pixelate the area you cover, breaking it into blocks. Blur softens it instead. Either way the underlying detail is obscured, but the look is quite different.
Pixelation tends to be the easier one to judge on text. Blocks make it obvious at a glance whether digits are still readable. Blur can look tidier on something like a face in the background of a holiday photo.
Whichever you pick, check the result at full zoom before you share it. A quick look at a thumbnail is not a verification.
Availability and caveats
Two things are worth knowing before you go looking for the tool.
- Android only for now. As of September 30, the Redact tool is rolling out on Android, with no confirmed timeline for iOS.
- Staged rollout. It is arriving gradually, so it may not have reached your account yet even on an up-to-date app.
If the Redact pen is not in your Markup tools, updating Google Photos from the Play Store is the main step available. After that it is a waiting game, since staged rollouts land on different accounts at different times.
Source: Android Police
