How to add, remove, change, or hide People in the Photos app in iOS 10

Organize your friends and family by the photos you've taken of them!

The Photos app collects your images in a variety of automatic albums, including People: This grouping lets you view your friends, family, and even a selfie or two by the people in the photograph. 
Apple uses machine learning to not only recognize people inside your images, but identify the same person in multiple photos. Like Facebook's algorithm, it's not perfect, but it's easy enough to correct. Here's how you can view common faces, put names to them, remove faces that have been misidentified, and hide faces you don't particularly want to see.

• Why do I want to use the People album?
• How to view People and Faces in the Photos app
• How to name or rename People in the Photos app
• How to remove People or Faces that have been wrongly identified in the Photos app
• How to add Favorite People or Faces in the Photos app
• How to hide People or Faces from the Photos app
• How to add new People or Faces to the Photos app
• How to merge multiple People and Faces collections into a single person in the Photos app

Why do I want to use the People album?

Apple automatically identifies people in your images and collects them into the People album. This is all done locally on your iPhone, and doesn't sync with your other devices (though it may in future versions of iOS if Apple can guarantee user privacy).

From here, it's up to you what you want to do with that information. You can ignore the People album if you like, but if you go in and label names, you'll be able to use the smart search bar in Photos to find images with multiple tagged people; I use this all the time to find images of me and my fiancé, or images of him and his dog. (Yes, you can combine people searches with Apple's "computer vision" category-tagged items.)

How to view People and Faces in the Photos app

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

4. Tap on a person or face to view their collection.

   

As with the Memories app, individual People collections offer a video slideshow, Photo Summary, and a full collection of all the photos involving that person. You can view the video by pressing the Play button; from here, you can adjust length (Short, Medium, or Long) or music within this area, but you'll need to export the video to Memories if you want to do any further edits.

How to name or rename People in the Photos app

1. Select a person or face from the People album.
2. Tap the + Add Name option (or the person's name, if they've already been identified).
3. Type in their name. As you type, autocomplete suggestions will appear from your Contacts; you can either choose from those options, or enter in a name manually.

4. Press Done.

   

How to remove People or Faces that have been wrongly identified in the Photos app

1. Select a person or face from the People album.
2. Tap the Select button in the upper left corner.
3. Tap Show All if you're not sure which images you want to correct.
4. Tap Show Faces to zoom in on the person identified in the photo thumbnails.

5. Select a thumbnail (or multiple thumbnails) to select them.

   

6. Tap the Share button.

7. Select the Not This Person button from the bottom left corner.

   

If you have a 3D Touch-enabled device, you can also Peek on any photo and slide up to get the Not This Person button.

How to add Favorite People or Faces in the Photos app

1. Open the People album from the Albums tab.

2. Tap and drag a face from the bottom half of the screen to the top half of the screen. Alternatively, tap Select, then pick a face and tap Favorite in the bottom center of the screen.

   

To unfavorite a person, follow the same steps, but select a person from the top half of the screen, then tap Unfavorite along the bottom center of the screen.

Note: If you only want to see your Favorite people or faces, you can tap the Show Favorites Only link below your Favorites thumbnails to hide any uncategorized or non-favorite users.

How to hide People or Faces from the Photos app

1. Open the People album from the Albums tab.
2. Tap Select, then pick a face and tap Hide in the bottom center of the screen.

3. Once you hide a face, it appears below unlabeled faces in a Hidden section. Tap Show Less to hide those faces from the main screen.

   

Note: Hiding people will only make them disappear from this screen; you'll still see their images in the main Photos app unless you hide them.

How to add new People or Faces to the Photos app

1. Open the People album from the Albums tab.
2. Tap the Add People icon; it's located after all the non-Favorites thumbnails.
3. Select a person or multiple people you'd like to add.

4. Tap the Add button.

   

Note: It's likely that the same person might have several groups of unlabeled photos; to speed up identifying time, you can select multiple thumbnails of the same person, then press Merge, then Merge & Add, which will unify those into a complete album.

How to merge multiple People and Faces collections into a single person in the Photos app

1. Open the People album from the Albums tab.
2. Tap Select.
3. Select the people or faces collections that you want to merge (two or more).

4. Tap Merge, then Merge again.

   

Questions?

Let us know in the comments.