Find and identify photos of people using Photos on Mac
When you first open Photos, it scans your library to identify people in your photos. After the scan is done, you can open the People album, view photos organised by the faces in them, and assign names to the people Photos found. As you import new photos into your library, Photos matches any people in them to the people you’ve identified. You can also identify the people in your photos manually.
View people in your library
In the Photos app on your Mac, click People in the sidebar.
People that you mark as favourites appear in large squares at the top of the window. To make a person a favourite, click the Favourites button on the photo. You can also drag someone into or out of the favourites area at the top.
Tip: When you see an unnamed face in the window, you can position the pointer over the face, click Name, then enter a name.
Double-click a face to see the photos of that person.
To see entire photos or only faces, click the Photos or Faces button in the toolbar. To see all of a person’s photos or just a selection, click Show More or Show All at the top of the Photos area.
To add a name to a person’s photos, click Add Name in the toolbar, enter a name (or choose a name that appears as you type), click Next, then click Done.
All the photos in the group are assigned the name. If a person is misidentified, you can change it by clicking it in the toolbar.
Do any of the following:
View photos on a map: Scroll down to Places, then double-click a photo thumbnail to see the location where the photo was taken.
Confirm additional photos of a person: When Photos identifies additional photos of a person, you can review them and confirm that the correct name is applied. Scroll down below Places, then click Confirm Additional Photos. When a photo of the person appears, click Yes to confirm the person’s identity or No to indicate that this is not the person. Click Done to stop reviewing possible photos of the person.
Add or remove a person from Favourites: Scroll down below Places, then click Add This Person to Favourites or Remove [name] from Favourites.
Remove a person from the People album: Scroll down below Places, then click Remove [name] from People.
When you remove a person from the People album, the original photos aren’t removed from your library.
Create a memory using photos of a person: Scroll down below Places, then click Create Photo Memory. A new memory about this person appears in Memories.
See fewer photos of this person: If you prefer not to see photos of a person in your People album, scroll down below Places, then click “Feature [name] less”. Photos of this person will appear less often in Memories and in the People album. To change this setting, choose Photos > Preferences, click General, then click Reset Suggested People.
Select a photo as the “key photo” to represent all photos of a person: While viewing thumbnails of the person, Control-click a photo, then choose Make Key Photo.
Combine photos of a person into one group
If you find more than one group of photos that identify the same person, you can combine the groups.
In the Photos app on your Mac, click People in the sidebar.
Select the groups of photos that you want to combine.
Control-click one group, then choose Merge [number] People.
Manually identify and name people in a photo
Some photos may contain people who are not automatically named. You can name them manually.
In the Photos app on your Mac, double-click a photo to open it.
Do one of the following:
Choose View > Show Face Names. Click the name (or click “unnamed”) under a face, type a name, then press Return (or choose a name that appears as you type).
Click the Info button in the toolbar. Click the Add button , drag the circle to position it over the face if necessary, click the Name field, type a name, then press Return.
You can click the Add button multiple times to identify multiple faces in a photo. To remove a name that you added to a face, click the Remove button on the person.
To stop showing face names in photos, choose View > Hide Face Names.