Google Photos could soon show some more love to your RAW photos

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Google Photos could soon show some more love to your RAW photos

Nov 4, 2026 — 6:21 AM ET

- Google is working on a new “RAW images” section in Google Photos’ Collections tab.

- This section will display all the RAW images backed up in Google Photos.

- The feature isn’t live right now, but we managed to surface it with some tinkering.

Most Android phones these days can shoot RAW photos right out of the box. While that is great for image quality and offers better control while editing, RAW files also take up a lot of space. This can quickly turn into a problem when they begin eating into your Google account storage. It can also be difficult to find RAW photos in the app when you want to edit them. Fortunately, Google seems to be working to fix both those problems.

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While digging through the latest version of the Google Photos app (v8.0), we spotted evidence of a new feature that could make it easier for users to find and manage the RAW photos backed up to the service.

Right now, the app displays RAW photos in the main photo grid with a small “RAW” badge in the corner. This makes RAW photos hard to distinguish from regular JPEGs in the main grid, making them difficult to find if you want to edit them or delete them to free up Google Photos storage.

However, according to code we spotted in the latest version of Google Photos, Google could add a dedicated “RAW images” section to the “Collections” tab in a future update. Although we could not find a way to make the option appear directly in Collections, we managed to surface it via Ask Photos after a bit of tinkering. Clearly, the UI is still a work in progress.

This new section will display all the RAW images in your Google Photos library in one convenient place. If no RAW photos are backed up, the screen will simply read: “No RAW images.” Naturally, deleting unwanted files is not the only use case here. The shortcut will also let users quickly locate RAW shots in their library so they can jump straight into editing without having to hunt through the main grid first.

This Google Photos feature is not live yet, and Google is still refining it. However, the underlying filter already works as expected. Hopefully, Google will iron out the kinks and roll it out to everyone soon.