Daily Tips

Using the ‘People’ feature of iOS Photos

With iOS 14, it’s easy to find folks in your photos. In the Photos app, there’s a section of the app called “People.” 

It uses Apple’s facial technology to group pictures of the same people together. Hit “Search” on this screen, and you can identify the people in the pictures or combine identifications.

Find someone in the People album

The Photos app organizes the images of the people in the People album. You’ll see a face thumbnail for each person your device recognizes. To find someone in your People album:

  1. Open the Photos app.
  2. Tap the Albums tab.
  3. Tap the People album. 

If you named a person in the Photos app, you can also find them under the Search tab. Just tap Search, then type the person’s name.

Add someone to the People album

  1. Open a photo of the person that you want to add, then swipe up to see a thumbnail of the person under People.
  2. Tap the thumbnail, then tap Add Name and type the person’s name, or tap the name if it shows up.
  3. Tap Next, then tap Done.

Put a name to a face

Photos suggests names from your Contacts, but you can manually add a name to someone that’s already in your People album: Here’s how:

  1. Open the People album, then tap the thumbnail of the person that you want to name.
  2. Tap Add Name at the top of the screen.

Merge photos of the same person

Sometimes the same person is identified in more than one group within your People album. To merge all of the photos under one group, tap Select, then tap all of the thumbnails that show the same person. Tap Merge near the bottom-right corner. Groups also merge if you give them the same name.

(This how-to is based on my experiences and info on Apple’s support pages — where the images sometimes come from.)

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.