Here’s how to perfect your pictures and more with Apple’s Photos app on iPhone

Allison McDaniel | Apr 11 2022 - 10:19 am PT

While you may love or hate the iPhone’s Photos app, it’s the place where all your photos end up either way. With iCloud’s capabilities, it’s an easy way to keep track of your images across your Apple ecosystem. As the iPhone’s camera continues to make a name for itself, professional and amateur photographers alike keep crawling back to Apple to capture their memories.

Here’s a guide to help you better understand your iPhone’s Photos app.

It’s all in your ‘Library’

When in your library, you can view your images by years, months, or days. If you want to view everything in your library, you can select “All Photos.” As someone who doesn’t keep many photos, I find it easier to see all my images this way.

Within the app, there are countless ways to optimize your experience. Select an image and go to the share button in the bottom left corner. Scroll down and you’ll find a long list of actions. Here you can hide the image, create a slideshow, AirPlay to another device, create a Watch Face, or even print. There are even more specific actions you can take like adjusting the date, time, or location of the image, or assigning it to one of your contacts. With so much to do in the app, it establishes less need to use other photo apps.

Pro Tip: Did you know about the three-finger method to cut, copy, or paste photos on your iPhone?

Relive past memories under ‘For You’

See featured memories and your year in review in the ‘For You’ tab. You can customize your memories by calling them something else or even feature less of a specific person. At the bottom, you’ll find photos shared with you from other iOS users. It’ll look something like, “From [insert contact name].”

Organize with ‘Albums’

Albums are a nice way to organize your images based on a subject, image type, etc. To create an album, select the plus sign at the top left corner of the screen. You can either create a new album, create a new folder, or create an album to share with other iPhone users. To delete an album, go to the Albums tab at the bottom and select “Edit” at the top right corner of the screen. A red minus sign will appear at the corner of each album. Tap the minus next to whichever album you’d like to delete.

People & Places

The app utilizes facial recognition to keep track of who is in your photos. What’s cool is that you can tap someone’s image and you can see all of your photos with them right in one place. You can assign their profile to a contact or give them a special name.

The places feature captures the geographic location of your photos (those taken on your phone). There’s even a map where you can scroll through to see where specific images were taken.

Media Types

Media Types breaks down your image library into categories. For example, I can see that I have eight videos, 24 selfies, 11 photos taken in live mode, four photos taken in portrait mode, and 12 screenshots. This would be particularly useful for those with large libraries who are looking for specific image types. It takes out the hassle of having to scroll through an enormous amount of photos, especially if you can’t remember exactly what you’re looking for.

Utilities

Under Utilities, you will find images that were AirDropped to you under ‘Imports’. You can also find any hidden photos and those recently deleted. The photos and videos under ‘Recently Deleted’ will take up to 40 days to be removed from Photos forever.

‘Search’ through your collection

Search is like your in-app Google where you can type in to search for photos with specific locations, people, categories, etc. Also, below the search bar, you simply tap a location to find all your images there. Your ‘Recently Searched’ will keep track of your search history in case you don’t want to forget photos you were looking for previously.