Getting Started with the People Album in Apple Photos on Mac
Apple Photos offers more than just sorting images by date or location. One of its most powerful features is the People album, which allows you to organize your photos based on the people who appear in them. In this guide, you’ll learn how the People feature works on a Mac, how Photos recognizes faces, and how to improve accuracy so finding pictures of the important people in your life becomes fast and intuitive.
🎓 What You’ll Learn
Where to find the People album in Apple Photos
How Apple Photos analyzes images to detect faces
How to name and identify people in your photo library
How favorites work in the People album
How to confirm additional photos for better accuracy
The difference between Photos view and Faces view
How to manually add a face when Photos does not recognize one
🧍♂️ Understanding How People Works in Apple Photos
The People feature in Apple Photos analyzes each photo in your library to determine whether a person appears in the image. Photos does this automatically in the background, examining every image one at a time and sorting them into groups with people or no people at all.
This process can take time, especially when you first open the People album or add a large number of new photos. While analysis is running, you may see a message indicating that People is still updating in the background.
Key points about how People works:
Face detection happens automatically
Analysis runs in the background
Larger libraries take longer to process
🏷️ Naming and Identifying People
When you open the People album, you may see unnamed faces. Clicking on a face allows you to type in a name, and Apple Photos will often suggest names based on your Contacts app.
To improve accuracy, it’s recommended to manually name multiple photos of the same person. Providing a larger sample helps Photos better recognize that person across your library.
Helpful tips:
Name at least 10 to 20 photos per person
Use clear, well-lit photos when possible
Be consistent with names
❤️ Using Favorites in the People Album
You can favorite people to keep them at the top of the People album for quick access. Favoriting does not affect recognition accuracy, but it does make frequently viewed people easier to find.
You can also unfavorite or completely remove someone from the People album using the contextual menu.
Favorites are useful for:
Family members
Close friends
People you search for often
🔍 Reviewing and Confirming Additional Photos
As Photos learns more about each person, it may prompt you to review additional photos. This confirmation process helps ensure Photos is correctly identifying the same person across multiple images.
When reviewing photos, you are asked to confirm whether each image contains the same person. Confirming or rejecting these suggestions directly improves future recognition.
This process can be time-consuming, but it significantly improves accuracy over time.
🖼️ Photos View vs Faces View
Inside a person’s album, you can switch between Photos view and Faces view. Photos view shows full images where that person appears, even if other people are also in the picture.
Faces view zooms in on the individual’s face, making it easier to confirm whether Photos is identifying the correct person. This does not modify the photo itself and only changes how the images are displayed.
➕ Manually Adding a Face
Sometimes Photos does not automatically recognize a face, especially if the person is partially obscured or turned away from the camera. In these cases, you can manually add a face.
By opening the photo’s information panel, you can add a face marker, position it over the face, and assign a name. This allows you to include that photo in the People album even when automatic detection fails.
Important notes:
Manual face tagging works for people
Pets and animals are not automatically analyzed
Manually added faces appear in the People album