How to Pin and Reorder Google Photos Collections

The Collections tab in Google Photos has quietly become the most cluttered screen in the app: albums, people, places, screenshots, documents, videos and trash, all in one scroll. Google has added controls to pin the things you actually use to the top and push the rest out of the way.

This is a display change, not a storage or sharing change. Rearranging Collections does not move photos, alter who can see an album, or affect what is backed up.

What the new layout looks like

When the update reaches your account, Collections opens with a pinned row at the top. Google’s defaults are Favorites, Screenshots and Trash. To the right of those three you get a plus control, and there is an Edit button that opens a screen where you swap out what is pinned. At the bottom of the tab there is a Reorder control for everything below the pinned row.

What you can pin is broader than albums. According to Android Authority’s walkthrough, you can pin individual albums, photos tagged with a location, and images where a document was detected.

Pin what you use

Open Google Photos and tap Collections at the bottom.
Tap the plus icon next to the pinned row, or tap Edit.
Pick the album, place or category you want at the top. None of the walkthroughs we read states a fixed limit on how many items the pinned row holds.
Tap done, then back out. The change applies to your account, so it should follow you to other devices signed in with the same Google account.

Reorder and hide the rest

Scroll to the bottom of Collections and tap Reorder.
Drag the strips into the order you want: screenshots first, people last, or whatever matches how you actually search.
Hide anything you never open. Hidden items collapse into a compact set of buttons labelled Other Collections rather than disappearing.
If you do not want the Favorites strip at all, you can switch it off from the same Reorder menu.

If you do not see it yet

This is a server-side rollout, so the app version on your phone is only half the story. Android Authority reports the redesigned tab appearing on devices from late October 2026 onward, and the rollout is phased. If your Collections tab still looks like the old grid:

Update Google Photos from the Play Store or App Store, then force close and reopen the app.
Check that you are on the account you expect — Google rolls these changes out per account, not always per device.
Wait a few days. There is no setting that forces a phased rollout to arrive early, and third-party “unlock” tricks are not worth the risk.

Worth knowing before you rearrange

The pinned row is a shortcut, not a filter. Pinning Trash makes Trash easier to reach, which is occasionally exactly what you want and occasionally a way to delete the wrong thing by accident. Pinning a shared album does not share it with anyone new. And hiding a strip only affects your own view.

For other recent Android changes worth knowing about, see our roundup of new Android features.

What we did not do

We did not capture our own screenshots of the new layout, and the steps above are drawn from published walkthroughs rather than a hands-on test. Labels can differ slightly between Android and iOS and between app versions, so if a button name does not match, look for the plus icon and the Reorder control at the bottom of the tab.