Use the People & Pets album in Photos on your iPhone or iPad

The Photos app recognizes the faces of people and pets in your photos and groups them together. You can name the people or pets in your photos, mark your favorites, and more.

Here's how it works

The Photos app scans your photos to help you quickly recognize the people, scenes, and objects within the photos. And in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and later, the Photos app can recognize dogs and cats, too. Depending on the number of photos that you have, you can watch a Memory movie of them. And when you have iCloud Photos turned on, the people you favorite or name stay up to date across your Apple devices.

Find someone in the People & Pets album

The Photos app organizes the images of the people, dogs, and cats in the People & Pets album (or the People album if no dogs or cats are identified). You see a face thumbnail for each person or pet your device recognizes. To find someone in your People & Pets album:

  1. Open Photos.

  2. Swipe up, then tap the People & Pets album.

If you named a person or pet in the Photos app, you can also find them with the Search button on the main screen. Just tap Search , then type their name.

Learn what to do if you don't see your pets in the People & Pets album

Add someone to the People & Pets album

  1. Open a photo of the person or pet that you want to add.

  2. Tap the Info button , then tap the face of the person or pet with a question mark.

  3. Tap Name This Person or Name This Pet and type their name or tap the name if it shows up. If the person or pet is previously recognized, tap Merge Photos.

  4. Tap Done.

Put a name to a face

Photos suggests names from your Contacts, but you can manually add a name to a person that's already in your People & Pets album:

  1. Open the People & Pets album, then tap the thumbnail of the person that you want to name.

  2. Tap Name This Person, then type the person's name or select their name if it shows up.

  3. Tap Done.

Merge photos of the same person

Sometimes the same person is identified in more than one group within your People & Pets album. To merge all of the photos under one group:

  1. Go to the People & Pets album and tap Select.

  2. Select the people that you want to merge.

  3. Tap the More button, then tap Merge.

  4. Tap Merge Photos to confirm the merge.

Use "Feature Less" in the People & Pets album

With iOS 14 and later, you can have the Photos app feature certain people less frequently. This adjusts the way the Photos app curates your Memories, Featured photos, and the photos that you see in the Photos widget — so you see less photos of these people or pets. Here's how:

  1. Open the People & Pets album.

  2. Touch and hold a thumbnail.

  3. Tap "Feature [Name] Less."

  4. Select an option, like Feature This Person Less or Never Feature This Person, then tap Confirm.

If you choose to feature someone less, you have to reset their Memories settings in order to see that person again in the People album. Open Photos, touch and hold a thumbnail, then tap Reset [Name] Feature Settings.

Favorite people

Mark the People that you access the most as a Favorite so that it's easier to find them. To favorite someone, touch and hold the person's thumbnail, then tap Favorite. To favorite multiple people at once, tap Select, tap each person that you want to favorite, then tap the Favorite button at the bottom of the People album.

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. Open the People & Pets album, then tap the person or pet.

  2. Tap the More button, then tap Show Faces to focus on just their face in each photo.

  3. Touch and hold the photo that you want to use, then tap Make Key Photo.

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. In the People & Pets album, tap the person or pet.

  2. Tap Select, then tap each photo that isn't of the person or pet.

  3. Tap the More button on the bottom right, then tap "This is Not [This Person]".

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