Google Photos is a powerful photo storage and organization service that makes it easy to find photos of people you know. Here is a step-by-step guide to searching for and finding someone in your Google Photos library.
Table of Contents
Turn On Face Grouping
The first step is to make sure face grouping is enabled. This feature allows Google Photos to detect faces in your photos and group similar faces together.
To turn on face grouping:
- On your Android/iOS device, open the Google Photos app and tap your profile icon > Photos Settings > Group Similar Faces. Turn on the toggle.
- On the web, go to photos.google.com/settings and turn on “Group Similar Faces” under Face Grouping.
Face grouping may take some time to process all the faces in your library, so wait a few hours after turning it on before searching.
Label Faces
Once face grouping is enabled, you need to properly label at least one photo of each person you want to be able to search for.
To label a face:
- On mobile, tap the Search icon, then tap “View All” next to People & Pets.
- On web, click “Search” then “People & Pets”.
Find the face you want to label and tap “Who’s This?”. Type the person’s name and tap Confirm. Google Photos will now group all similar photos of that person together.
Search for a Person
With face grouping enabled and faces labeled, you can now easily search for photos of anyone labeled:
- On mobile/web, tap/click on the search bar.
- Type the name of the person you labeled.
- All photos with that person will appear!
You can also search using visual terms like “John at the beach” to find only photos matching that description.
Create an Album
To collect all the search results into an album:
- Tap/click the Select button at the top.
- Choose “Add to Album” and select whether to add to a new or existing album.
Now you have all photos neatly organized into an album that can be shared.
Fix Incorrect Groupings
If face grouping made a mistake and grouped the wrong faces together:
- Find a misgrouped photo and tap/click the face.
- Choose “Who’s This?” to relabel that face.
Over time as you correct errors, the face grouping will continue to improve.
Conclusion
Searching for people you know in Google Photos is easy with face grouping enabled. Just turn the feature on, label at least one photo per person, search for their name, and collect photos into albums to share. With practice, you’ll be able to find photos by visual search as well. Happy searching!
I have over 10 years of experience using Google Photos and other organizing software. Let me know if you have any other questions!
