A lifelong musician, Hamed plays multiple instruments, including guitar, bass, and oud. He is equally fascinated by smart-home technology and can happily spend hours geeking out over connected lights, speakers, sensors, and automations that make everyday life a little more interesting. When he isn’t covering the latest tech news, he explores more creative topics on his Medium blog, works on his music, or clears his head by riding his motorcycle.
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Google Photos is finally giving users a way to turn off the generic background music it automatically adds to Memories. According to Google’s official announcement, the new background music toggle will roll out across all platforms. You can use the toggle to silence the soundtrack without disabling Memories or having to mute the original audio in your videos.
The setting is global, so switching it off will affect every Memory, including the End of Year Recap that Google somehow always suggests to you on a gloomy afternoon. Also, Google has refreshed its music library with newer soundtracks (although they are still tasteless, in my humble opinion).
Google Photos Memories no longer need a soundtrack
And this should have been optional from the beginning
Memories are supposed to resurface a collage of photos and videos from meaningful events. The feature itself can be very charming, except when it shows you photos of your ex or someone’s now-dead hamster that you had forgotten were still on your phone. But you know what can turn it up a notch and make the experience much more meaningful and charming? Certainly not elevator music!
The automatically added music often feels like Google is trying to dictate how you should feel about your own pictures, and it’s often not even good. Even when the music is not emotionally tone-deaf to the footage, it makes every Memory feel like one of those overly sentimental, unskippable ads you see on YouTube.
Google Photos already offers plenty of ways to control what it resurfaces. You can hide particular people, pets, or dates, disable certain kinds of Memories, and change several other settings. In fact, taking the time to change a few Google Photos settings can make the entire app much more tailored to your needs and preferences. Somehow, a global music toggle went over everyone’s heads at Google.
Once the option reaches your account, open Google Photos and head to Photos settings. Select Preferences, open Memory preferences, and find the new Music section. Turning off Background music will stop the additional tracks across all Memories.
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