Pixel Screenshots is an imperfect but surprisingly helpful app

It’s Pixel 9 review day and while you might see reviews or hands-ons hitting some websites, we here at MobileSyrup have only had the devices for a few days at this point, so we want to spend some more time with them before putting out our reviews. In lieu of a Pixel 9 review today, I did want to spend some time talking about Google’s flashy new Pixel Screenshots app.

In case you missed it, Pixel Screenshots is a new app on the Pixel 9 series of phones that can use AI to scan your screengrabs and pull information out of them. Specifically, it uses Google’s Gemini Nano model, which is designed to run locally on smartphones, so there’s a bit of a privacy benefit there since all the processing happens on device. Plus, since the app isn’t offloading processing to the cloud, there should be some power-saving benefits too.

The overall app interface is pretty basic. At the top is a row of ‘Collections,’ which are essentially folders you can make to organize your screenshots. Below that are your screenshots proper, which feature an AI-generated title and show an icon indicating which app the screenshot came from.

Tapping into a screenshot will give you a bigger view of the image, pull up buttons to share or edit the screenshot. There’s also a button that lets you set reminders related to a specific screenshot, which could be helpful if you want to resurface something at a later date. Under these items, the app will show AI-generated details pulled from the screenshot. For example, the app pulled text from a screengrab I took of a recipe I saw on TikTok and put it into this details section. These AI-generated details are both one of the app’s main strengths and also a weakness, which I’ll get into more below. Finally, at the bottom, users can add their own notes to a screenshot and add it to a collection.

Back on the main page, there’s a search bar to let people search their screenshots and a ‘+’ button to manually add images from the camera or gallery. This is handy if you want to add something to the Screenshots app that isn’t a screenshot.

But does it actually work?

My experience with Pixel Screenshots so far has been mixed. First up, you can import all your old screengrabs into the app, but you have to make sure you’re copying them over from your old phone when setting up a Pixel 9 device. I usually don’t copy over all my photos when setting up a new phone because they’re already backed up to the cloud and it makes the process go faster, which is handy for me since I frequently try new phones as part of my job. However, it meant none of my screenshots were pulled into the Screenshots app, and I had to manually pull them in myself. Coupled with the lack of a bulk import option from Google Photos, I ended up only pulling in a few recent items, which meant I had a smaller library of screengrabs to test out.

Speaking of Photos, one frustration I quickly found with the Screenshots app is that it doesn’t seem to have much integration with Google Photos. All of my screenshots get back up to Photos, so why can’t I connect Screenshots to that backup in some way? And why is there no seamless option to push images to Pixel Screenshots? Moreover, I feel like Screenshots could have been a feature of Google Photos instead of a standalone app, which would address some of the integration issues. And I had hoped to see more integration with other parts of the Google ecosystem. For example, it’d be great if Gemini could plug into Screenshots instead of forcing me to open the Screenshots app to search for things.

The AI-generated details followed by notes and collections.

Beyond that, Screenshots did a decent job at processing my screengrabs and pulling information from them, though it wasn’t perfect. I had a handful of screenshots that the app couldn’t process, which meant they didn’t show up in any searches. I also found it odd that the app could automatically pull information from screenshots and title them but couldn’t sort them into Collections for me.

The processing of screenshots happens fairly quickly and occurs in the background, through the app displays a notification when it’s processing screengrabs so you know when it’s working and when it finishes. And the app kept surprising me with the things it could capture. In one instance, it included the URL for a page that I took a screenshot of. In another test, the app offered an ‘Add to calendar’ button for a screengrab of upcoming tour dates for a band I was listening to on Spotify.

Plenty of potential

Screenshots’ processing notification.

Overall, I like what Google’s doing with the Pixel Screenshots app and I think with a bit of work, the company can make it a really helpful app. The foundation for Screenshots is strong and it’s already pretty good at pulling up information, which works well in combination with the nature of screengrabs. I often grab a screenshot of anything I want to remember, like recipes, receipts, information for a game I’m playing or any number of other things.

I also appreciate that I have a little more control over Pixel Screenshots than similar features like Microsoft’s delayed Recall feature, which offers similar search-your-screenshot functionality. However, Recall works automatically and constantly captures screengrabs in the background, which significantly increases the risk that it might capture potentially sensitive information. While Pixel Screenshots still carries that same risk, it only works on screenshots that users capture or on images they manually load into the app. That means I have a level of control over what Screenshots sees. Plus, the processing is happening on-device, so Google isn’t seeing all my screenshots.

Loving the tweaked screenshot animation.

Aside from my minor quibbles, I think Screenshots is a great addition from Google and overall an actually helpful AI feature. At the same time, I don’t think Screenshots alone is reason to upgrade to the Pixel 9 series, especially if you have a Pixel 8. While Google hasn’t said anything about bringing Pixel Screenshots to older devices, I think it should run just fine on the Pixel 8 series, given those phones support Gemini Nano, which powers the app.

Stay tuned to MobileSyrup for more about the Pixel 9 and a full review in the coming weeks.