Google Photos has finally shipped an off switch for shimmer — the animated outline that creeps around people and objects a few seconds after you open a photo, prompting you to long-press and turn them into a sticker. The new “Show shimmer” toggle is rolling out with Google Photos 7.85 on Android, alongside a partial redesign of the app’s Settings and a new camera shortcut for AI templates.
How to turn off shimmer in Google Photos
The toggle is off-by-default in the sense that shimmer stays on until you go and switch it off yourself. Here is where to find it:
- Update Google Photos from the Play Store to version 7.85 or newer.
- Open Google Photos and tap your profile picture, then Photos settings.
- Go to Preferences > Photos view. (You can also reach Photos view from the three-dot overflow menu.)
- Turn off Show shimmer.
One limit worth knowing: switching it off does not remove the shimmer everywhere. You will still see the effect when you long-press a picture and are actually trying to cut out a sticker — which is the point. It just stops the app flashing an animation at you every time you open an image you only wanted to look at.
Why this took so long, and why it matters
Shimmer arrived on iOS last year and reached Android in February, and it has been one of the more universally disliked Google Photos changes since. This is not just aesthetic preference. Users on Google’s own Photos support forums reported that the constantly repeating animation gives them headaches and makes them feel nauseated — a straightforward accessibility problem, given that motion sensitivity is common enough that both Android and iOS ship system-wide reduce-motion settings for exactly this reason.
That is the uncomfortable part of this story. A visual effect whose only job is to advertise a feature most people do not use was made unavoidable for everyone, with no opt-out, for roughly five months on Android — and the fix only arrived after sustained complaints. Android Authority’s AssembleDebug first spotted the toggle in a version 7.82 teardown in June; it took until now to ship. An engagement nudge for stickers should never have been allowed to override motion accessibility in the first place.
The rest of the 7.85 update
- Material 3 Expressive settings: the main Settings page, Backup and Preferences get the container-based redesign. Notifications, Sharing, Apps & devices and Privacy are still on the old look, so expect a mixed-up Settings screen for a while.
- Camera shortcut for AI templates: when using Remix, Photo to video or other AI templates, a floating camera button now lets you shoot a fresh photo as input instead of digging one out of your library.
These changes have been surfacing gradually rather than all at once, so having 7.85 installed is no guarantee you will see all three today.
Sources: 9to5Google, Android Authority
