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APK available] Google Camera will promote Pixel’s Night Sight to the main interface, at the expense of Panorama

Jarvis

July 5, 2019

A build of Android Q beta 5 leaked yesterday with a new sensitivity setting for the back gesture, and hidden within it is a new version of Google Camera 6.3. The current stable build we all have is v6.2, so 6.3 is still an unreleased update and could change in the future before it reaches the public. But it does give us a glimpse into what Google is working on with its Camera app. Namely, the Pixel’s excellent Night Sight mode will be more easily accessible.

In this leaked version of Camera 6.3, the leftmost mode is Night Sight. So instead of going to the More tab on the right, then choosing Night Sight, you can easily swipe twice to get to it. However, this is happening to the detriment of Panorama, which used to occupy the left tab and is now demoted to the More tab. I like the easier access to Night Sight, specifically because I use it in daylight and around sunrise/sunset, where the app’s automatic suggestion to enable Night Sight never shows up. However, I’m also a fan of panos, so I wish Google would let us customize the Camera’s tabs to set as many or little as we want, according to our use.

Left: Night Sight becomes the leftmost tab. Right: Panorama gets moved to the More tab.

This version also brings one unexpected change: the color temperature icon is gone from the camera, so you can’t change the white balance on the go anymore. I reckon I rarely used it, but the few times I did, I got better results compared to the tinted indoor photos that the Auto white balance setting had produced. Maybe this is just a bug in the unreleased version, or maybe Google would rather you shoot the original scene then use Photos’ non-destructive editing chops to make it better. That’s what I usually resort to when a pic’s color temperature is off, and a simple edit to Auto in Photos magically transforms the image into what it should’ve been.