How to Use the 'People' Feature in Mac Photos

The first time you open the Photos app on your Mac, your entire library is scanned to identify different ‘faces’ in the photos, and they are then grouped together. Once done, you can open the People album to see the groups of photos, and assign names to each group. The next time you take a photo of one of these people, Photos will automatically assign that ‘face’ to the relevant group. And if it doesn’t, you can identify the faces in your photos manually.

• In the Photos app on your Mac, click on People in the side bar. Double click on one of the faces to see all photos that have been assigned to that name.

 

• In the top right hand corner of the screen there are two options: Photos or Faces. Toggle between the two to either see entire photos containing that person, or the zoomed in version of that person’s face within the photo.

 

• To name a person’s photos, click ‘Add Name’ in the toolbar, type and press return. If the wrong name has been assigned, control-click the photo and choose “[name] is not in this photo” or “This is not [name]”.

 

• To find other photos that contain a previously identified face, scroll to the bottom of the window and click Confirm Additional Photos. Click Yes to confirm relevant photos, and then click Done. Alternatively, a message may appear inviting you to review additional photos that the app believes it may have identified. Click Review and then Done.

 

• If you don’t like the photo that has been chosen to be the ‘key photo’, you can control-click the photo you prefer, then choose Make Key Photo.

 

• To make a person a Favourite, scroll to the bottom of that person’s photos, and click Favourite This Person (or Unfavourite This Person to remove them as a favourite).

 

• If there is more than one group of the same person’s photos, you can combine the two groups: click and drag one group and drop into the other group - you will be asked ’Is this the same person?’ - click ‘yes’.

 

• To manually name faces in a photo: click the ‘i’ (info) in the toolbar, then click the ‘+’ (add) button and drag the circle to position it over the face. Then click on the name field, type and press return. You can repeat this for as many faces as appear in the photo.

 

• If you want to remover a person entirely from the People album, double-click on that person in the People album, then scroll to the bottom of the window and you will see an option to ‘Remove from People Album’. (Note: this will not remove any photos from your actual photo library).