ColorOS 16 September Update: 5 New Photos App Features That Make Gallery Management Easier

Almost everyone has a few photos sitting in the wrong place in their phone gallery. Maybe they came from an old phone, were restored from a backup, or were scanned years later. Suddenly, a family photo from 2015 appears under 2026.

OPPO is trying to solve problems like these with the ColorOS 16 September update. Most of the new changes are focused on the OPPO Photos app, along with a useful improvement for Private Safe.

These may not look like huge features on their own, but together they can make managing thousands of photos much easier. The rollout started on September 1 and will continue in phases until September 30.

ColorOS 16 September Update Features at a Glance

Time Adjustment Lets You Fix Wrong Photo Dates

Every photo contains information known as a timestamp. This tells the phone when the picture was taken and helps the gallery place it at the correct point in your timeline.

Sometimes this information gets messed up. It can happen after restoring a backup, transferring photos from an older phone, receiving images through certain apps, scanning printed photos, or even using the wrong time zone while travelling.

With the new Time Adjustment feature, you can correct the date directly from the Photos app.

Open the photo, check its details and tap Adjust beside the capture time. You can then choose the correct date and time.

Once changed, the photo automatically moves to the correct place in your gallery.

This can be especially useful if you are scanning old family photographs. Instead of showing the date when the photo was scanned, you can set the actual year in which it was taken.

Hide Customised Albums in ColorOS 16

A customised album is an album created manually by the user. This is different from automatically generated folders such as Camera, Screenshots or Downloads.

ColorOS 16 now allows you to hide selected customised albums from the main Photos screen.

For example, you may have albums containing work receipts, ID card images, gift ideas, documents or personal photos that you do not want appearing every time you browse the gallery.

The Hide Customised Albums option removes these albums from the main Photos view without deleting anything.

Your pictures remain on the phone. They simply stay out of the regular gallery view.

This can also be handy when handing your phone to someone to show holiday or family photos without unrelated albums appearing in between.

Batch Favourites Saves a Lot of Tapping

Marking photos as favourites can become tiring when you have hundreds of pictures from a wedding, birthday, holiday or event.

With Batch Favourites, ColorOS 16 lets you select multiple photos and add all of them to favourites in one go.

The same option also works in reverse. You can select several favourite photos and remove them from favourites together.

It is a small improvement, but anyone who takes a lot of photos will probably appreciate it.

Scan Text Lets You Copy Words From Photos

The new Scan Text feature uses OCR, or Optical Character Recognition.

In simple words, the phone can recognise letters and numbers inside a photo and convert them into text that you can copy, edit or share.

This can be useful in many everyday situations.

You can copy a Wi-Fi password from a router label, save a phone number from a shop board or extract a paragraph from a printed notice without typing everything manually.

The feature also works with document photos.

If you take a picture of a bill, notes or a form at an angle, Scan Text can straighten the page and reduce glare or shadows to make the document look cleaner.

Flexible Photo View Adds Two Gallery Layouts

ColorOS 16 also introduces a Flexible Photo View for browsing photos and albums.

Users can switch between two viewing styles from the View option.

Immersive View gives more focus to the photos and works well when you simply want to scroll through memories.

By Date View arranges pictures according to the day they were taken. This makes it easier to find photos from a particular event or trip.

The ability to quickly switch between the two layouts should make large galleries easier to browse.

Private Safe Gets Easier File Selection

Private Safe is ColorOS’s protected storage area for files you want to keep locked away from normal access.

With the September update, adding files to Private Safe becomes easier.

You can now select multiple files in different formats directly from the Private Safe home page. ColorOS will automatically arrange them according to their file type.

To access it, go to:

Settings > Security and Privacy > Private Safe

Then tap the Add icon at the bottom-right corner.

OPPO has also improved photo selection inside the gallery. Accidental selections while scrolling should happen less often, while deliberately selecting photos should feel more accurate.

ColorOS 16 September Update Device List in India

OPPO is rolling out the September update to recent Find and Reno devices.

Here is the confirmed list.

The update is being released in phases, so every eligible phone may not receive it on the same day.

Even two users with the same OPPO model may get the update at different times. OPPO also says the order shown in the device list does not indicate rollout priority.

How to Get the ColorOS 16 September Update

The ColorOS 16 September build is delivered through an OTA update, which means Over The Air.

There is no need to connect the phone to a computer.

There is no reason to download a ColorOS 16 APK or update file from an unknown website.

Unofficial software files can contain malware or create software problems. The official OTA update from OPPO is free and is the safer option.

If the update is not showing on your phone yet, simply check again after a few days.

Some features may also work slightly differently depending on the phone model, hardware and software version.

OPPO Continues Monthly ColorOS 16 Updates

OPPO has been regularly adding new features to ColorOS 16 through monthly updates in India.

The June update introduced features including a Sports Widget and dual Bluetooth Audio Sharing.

The July update added custom fingerprint animations and new camera filters.

The September release is a little different.

Instead of focusing on another flashy AI feature, OPPO has worked on something people use almost every day: the phone gallery.

For users with thousands of photos, features such as correcting dates, hiding unnecessary albums, selecting favourites in bulk and extracting text from images can be genuinely useful.

If you are using an eligible OPPO Find X9 or Reno16 series phone, check the Software Update section over the next few days to see if the September ColorOS 16 update has arrived.