About People in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Explore your photos by the people or groups in them. Photos recognizes and groups the faces of people in your photos, so you can name them or mark your favorites.

Here's how it works

With iOS 10, you can sort your images by your favorite subjects—the people in your life. The Photos app uses advanced computer vision to scan all of your photos and recognize the people, scenes, and objects in them. Then you can see the best photos, videos, and Live Photos of each person in your collection. And depending on the number of photos you have, you can watch a Memory movie of them too.

To get started, update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the latest iOS.

Find your friends in the People album

Photos organizes the photos of your family and friends in your People album. You'll see a face thumbnail for each person your device recognizes, with the number of photos in the collection.

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

Want to see even more People in your album? Just tap Add People. Select the thumbnails for the people you want to show and tap Add.

     

Put a name to a face

Add a name to your photos to help keep your library organized. Photos intelligently suggests names from your Contacts or you can enter one yourself.

  1. Tap the face that you want to name.
  2. Tap  Add Name at the top of the screen.
  3. Select the person's name, or finish entering it and tap Done. 

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

Favorite people

You have lots of friends and family members in your People album. Mark the People that you access the most as a Favorite so that it's easier to find them in the future.

If you haven't set any Favorites yet, you see a thumbnail outline with Drag Your Favorites Here at the top of your screen.

 

Tap, hold, and drag the person that you want to favorite over the thumbnail outline. The person stays in the Favorites section.

 

Drag any additional people to the Favorites area that you want to easily access. Or you can tap the person's thumbnail, scroll to the bottom of the screen, then tap Favorite This Person. Have multiple people that you want to favorite at once? Choose Select, tap each person you want to favorite, then tap Favorite at the bottom of the People album.

Here’s a tip—on your iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, you can use 3D Touch on a face thumbnail and Favorite them.

Change a thumbnail photo

Photos automatically assigns a face thumbnail for each person it recognizes. If you want to use a different photo for someone's thumbnail, you can change it from their photo collection screen.

  1. Tap the person in the People album.
  2. Tap Select.
  3. Tap Show Faces to focus on just the person’s face in each photo.
  4. Tap the photo that you want to use.
  5. Tap  > Set Key Face.

Fix mixed-up names and faces

If you notice that there's a photo of someone in a collection that's misidentified, you can remove it.

  1. Tap the person that you want to remove in the People album > Select.
  2. Tap Show Faces to focus on just the person’s face in each photo.
  3. Tap each photo that isn't of the person.
  4. Tap  > Not This Person.
     

Hide people

You can hide people or groups that you don't want to see in your People album.

  1. Open the People album and tap Select.
  2. Tap the people that you don't want to see.
  3. Tap Hide.

If you want to see the people you've hidden, tap Show Hidden People.

Learn more

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