10 months later, the Pixel 10 still lacks the best camera feature

It’s been almost 10 months since the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL arrived at my door, and I’ve been using it as my primary phone ever since. This is my camera too and I did it too He took more than 4000 photos and videos with him to this day. So when I say I’m underwhelmed by one of its camera features, please know it’s not for not trying.

This is the feature I’m specifically talking about Auto Best Takeit’s a smarter, less involved version of the previous Pixels’ Best Take. No matter what I try, it just doesn’t work for me.

What Auto Best Take should do

The Auto Best Take feature on the Pixel 10 should enhance the existing Best Take feature launched with the Pixel 8. When you’ve taken a series of group photos, you can open the Photos app and go here. Edit > Actions > Best Shot forcing the app to search for similar images and suggest different faces to create a mosaic where everyone is smiling and looking good.

The Pixel 10 was supposed to automate this process. You just take a few group shots, and instead of manually selecting faces and enhancing the image, the phone should do it for you and offer a composite photo with everyone’s best faces. That’s the whole point of “Automatic” in Auto Best Take. The feature is shown in the video below and also in a clear GIF in Google’s announcement post here. Also, no matter what I try, I can’t get it to work properly.

There’s an Auto Best Take setting, but does it really work?

Until a few weeks ago, Google didn’t provide any explanation about how Auto Best Take works or how to enable it. The official support page the only requirement was to set Top Shot to Auto. I spent months trying to capture an Auto Top Shot at holidays, friend get-togethers, and group events. Nothing works. I would only get the few photos I took – nothing was automatically collected from them.

And now, an update to the Pixel Camera app has added a standalone switch to enable Auto Best Take specifically. (It still requires Top Shot.) I thought that would solve my problem with the feature, but alas, it doesn’t do the trick. I activated the new setting, made sure Top Shot was on, and over the past few weeks took multiple pictures of my husband and I, each of us turned sideways on every snap, to no avail.

Most of the time I only get the two photos I took. On a few rare occasions, I’ve encountered a third photo (as in the examples above) that I remember clearly that I wouldn’t have taken unless my finger accidentally touched the shutter button a third time. I suspect this might be an Auto Best Take mash-up, but there are many signs that contradict it:

1. The Pixel 10 says this third photo was taken by the Camera. The C2PA origin shows no edits. Manual Best Take photos indicate non-AI editing, so Auto Best Take shots should do the same.
2. There is no indication in the Google Photos app that this is an Auto Best Shot or Best Shot photo. Google’s marketing and demos suggest that it should make this clear.
3. If you look closely, the third photo has something vague compared to the other two. My husband’s head and eyes are not at the same angle as the first picture; even my own smile is slightly narrower than the second picture.

The devil’s advocate in me wants to say that this third photo was taken and stitched together thanks to Top Shot, so it doesn’t match the previous two photos, but there’s nothing to prove it. All of this really confuses me about Auto Best Take. Does it work? When? How?

I talked to myself Android Authority colleagues to find out if any of them had seen an automated Best Take shot after receiving their Pixel 10 phones, and none of them had. This is already a warning sign. I’ve also contacted Google to ask about Auto Best Take, how it works and how to get it to work properly, and haven’t heard back.

So that leaves you. Have you seen one of the Pixel 10’s flagship camera features work on your phone? Got any cool auto mixes of group photos? Let me know in the comments. I am interested to know.