Surprise integration: Google Photos teases CapCut support

A surprising discovery has indicated that Google Photos might be introducing CapCut support into its Android app, as it appears the technology behemoth has been quietly testing the new third-party integration.

Indeed, despite being extremely rare for Google to promote a third-party app within its own, especially one that’s owned by a company under scrutiny in several regions, the US included, it seems that this is exactly what’s happening, according to a report published by Android Authority on July 22.

Specifically, the researchers have been digging through the code of version 7.38 of the Google Photos app, and discovered a new ‘Edit in CapCut’ button directly linked to the popular video editing tool in the ownership of ByteDance, which also happens to be the parent company of TikTok.

Implementing CapCut support

As it happens, this button appears within the Memories viewer of Google Photos, where the new, full-screen Memories UI first showed up back in February 2025. From now on, memories made up of photos will have the ‘Edit in CapCut’ option showing up in the bottom left corner of the screen.

On the other hand, if a memory is a video spotlight (a video-only memory), it seems that the CapCut option isn’t there.

How to get access to CapCut for Google Photos

If you don’t have CapCut on your device, tapping the button opens a Play Store prompt to install the app. But if you do have it, the selected memory will likely download and arrive directly in the CapCut editor for further customization. 

That said, CapCut isn’t available in certain places, like India, which means that this feature will probably be inaccessible for users in those locations. The app was also under temporary suspension in the US, but returned earlier this year. 

Researchers believe that ByteDance might’ve offered incentives to Google to offer CapCut support in one of its most widely used apps. Another possibility is that Google is simply getting the lay of the land or planning a limited regional launch.

Meanwhile, among other interesting innovations, Google has earlier this year launched a new Androidify app, which allows you to create an Android Bot to your own likeness simply by uploading a photo of yourself, powered by the Gemini API and other technologies, like Jetpack Compose, CameraX, and Navigation 3.