Transcription
Do you feel like your camera roll on your iPhone is basically just a junk drawer of photos and videos? I totally get that because that's how I felt for a lot of years until I figured out the app that you're already using has tools that most people just have never even touched. So, here's what nobody tells you about Apple Photos. It is so much more powerful than just that grid of chaos you open and immediately close. There's a whole system built into it and once I found it, managing my library went from this thing I dreaded to something that I could knock out in 5 minutes a night. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to set up your Apple Photos app so it's actually working for you. The layout, the pin section, the search feature most people just scroll right past. So, let's get into it.
So, if I open my Photos app, um so you'll see I have a lot of photos. Um I have it zoomed out. I mean, you can, you know, zoom in and out to make it bigger, smaller grid, however you prefer. So, you'll see I've got a lot of random stuff. So, here's like a bunch of recipes um that I've saved. I've got a bunch of things from of my daughter, like mostly of my daughter.
When you open your app, you'll notice um that there is there's two tabs at the bottom. There's the library tab and collections. Now, the library is literally just chronological order of your photos. And as you start scrolling, um you'll see the years and months uh buttons pop up. And so, you can search by year um or months, obviously. Um And so, that's I mean, which is not a terrible thing cuz there's a lot of times when I'm like, "Oh yeah, I want to go look at my that picture of my daughter when she was 8 months old." And so, I know what month or whatever that might be.
But, um there's also the collections tab. And this tab might be um what a lot of people get scared of because honestly, when you go to it in a lot of the recent updates of Apple Photos, there's there's just a lot going on. There's like, you know, so many different sections. But, what I want to do is I want to walk you through ways that you can make this work for you and your organization needs.
Okay, so first of all, um if I come up to the three dots here, um there's a lot of different ways that you can actually customize your screen here. So, I could do this where it's instead of that memories tab being like really big, I could have them all these different sizes. I can show all or collapse all, so it's like, "Okay, that's a little bit more manageable." Um but, one thing that you can do is that you can actually reorder to how you want your pictures in like the albums and the things that you use the most, you can do it here. So, if I go to reorder, I can then come in. So, memories by default is at the top. Memories is basically Apple Photos' AI version of like what it thinks your memories are and stuff and trying to get you to view them and use them in the app and stuff. Okay, so we'll just for now, let's say let's get. So, then if I show all, so now um we've got, you know, I'm like, "Okay, yeah, so favorites, I use that um a little bit more um so pinned." And again, you can adjust this if you're like, "No, I don't want that first row being so big." Um and then albums and so, this is just really nice to allow you to kind of customize what you see in your main grid um first.
Now, so here, if I come to media types, I I do like media types because you can search by all these different media types. I know that I have so [snorts] many screenshots. Let's just see. Oh yeah, I have 7,000 screenshots. A lot of them are Amazon returns. A lot of them are just random stuff. Um and so, it's nice to be able to be like, "Oh, you know, go through and edit just screenshots." Maybe you want to delete them all. There's even um live photos, which I love. I always have my live photo setting turned on because that's I I like having the option of being able to change like the key photo, like the um like the actual frame of the photo. And then also, I love I can turn it into a video or add it to a video later. So, it's just I always have it turned on. Um but, that's just me. Anyways, and you can see all the different um media types that you can search through.
Now, uh let's talk about the pinned section. So, this one can actually be a game changer. This actually might be like my favorite thing to show people because a lot of people are like, "Wait, this has been here the whole time? Why have I never noticed that?" Now, I don't really have a ton of things here in my pinned section um but, I want to show you how to add things to your pinned section. So, if you come to um edit up here at the top, you can see what it already has by default. Um there's some suggestions of what you want pinned at the top. And you can even add any collections or albums that you already have. So, I specifically have an album called 2026 favorite memories or favorite moments. And this is what I um use throughout the year. I continually add images and videos, mostly videos, to this so that when I do my year-in-review video at the end of the year, um and I just sometimes like just having it right there. But, you could also, if there's any other albums that you use frequently, you can you can add those specifically to your pinned section. Even those sections that we that we had just ordered or just organized, you could add one of those um or any of those to your pinned section. So, it's really nice because when your most important albums are just one tap away, like it's a lot easier to just go and grab them. And if you are someone that sorts albums by years, then this is a great way to be able to just quickly, you know, put the latest year or whatever that you want access to.
All right, the next thing that I want to talk about is actually the search function. So, the search search function is actually really nice because I don't think a lot of people know how powerful it can actually be, but it's actually it kind of blows my mind in how well it can search things. So, for example, like a lot of people might go and search for like a a specific photo that they have in their mind. They're like, "Okay, like I'm looking for this chair." So, if we look at chair, um so there's these these different icon options with chair. So, there's the search function chair, which just basically searches images of what it thinks might have a chair in it. And then, there's this um icon that is searching for text. So, if I click on um that, then it's going to pop up any like screenshots or anything that has the the word chair in it, which is actually pretty nice. And then, it'll well, it'll give you some options like chairlift if I'm looking for that. And then chairs is another text. So, those are those are what kind of those those icons mean. So, you can search images of like actually looking for chairs in images and you can search uh for text, the text chair.
So, Apple Photos uses on-device AI, which means that so like it's all private. Nothing's being sent anywhere to recognize people, places, and objects, which means that you can search things like beach and it will show up beach and they don't have to be tagged. You don't have to manually tag them as beach. So, it's actually it's it's really nice. You can search by specific locations. So, if I want to do Hawaii, it will pull up images from Hawaii. And it will even um search your collections, too. So, if you have albums and memories, which Apple Photos created. And then I can even search people. So, if I want to search Tyler, so my husband, you can see that there's that option of um where it will actually search people. You can see that little icon. It'll or the text. If I search Abu, which is my cat, I can search text. I can search collections. I can search locations, which I've never been to Abu Dhabi. I think that's how you say it.
So, one other cool thing. So, so say I I remember that last summer, uh my husband and I went to Parade of Homes. We love going every year. It's basically just really pretty big houses that I you can walk through and just wish you lived in and get cool ideas for, you know, future dream homes that you'll never build. So, I I remember I'm like, "Okay, I remember there was one that had like these really cool green cabinets." So, I'm going to search green cabinets. Oh, and here we go. So, here is um here's that image. And then I'm like, "Okay, I and I want to see the rest of the house [snorts] cuz I know I took more photos." So, I'm going to click the three dots. I'm going to do show in all photos. And then here it is. So, I can see, "Oh yeah, here are those other photos of the house." So, I use uh show in photos all the time cuz it's just a a really great feature to quickly get to some photos that you know you took at some point, but you like might not have an album for them.
One other cool feature um is that you have the ability to filter within Apple Photos. So, if you come up to these three lines and then click filter, you can filter by favorites, uh videos, photos, edited photos, um screenshots. You can even filter by not in an album. So, that's really great news for those who like to just have everything in albums and they don't want anything in their main camera roll. That's a great feature for that. I actually talk more in depth about that in this video if you want to check it out.
And then, one other thing, if we come back to collections and you go to utilities, you can actually um there's even more ways to to filter your media by. Um and one of them is duplicates. So, you can go through and you can see all the duplicates that you have. And I obviously have a lot. Um but, you'll want to be careful because a lot of like most of the time it's going to be the exact same image, but it sometime it sometimes might not it might not be an actual duplicate. It just looks like it. So, for example here, these are separate. Um so, you just have to keep that in mind when you're going through and merging. But, you can also search by handwriting, uh QR codes, recently viewed, saved, edited, shared, all the things.
So, that's just a a quick little overview of how you can really take control of your Apple Photos app and organize it in a way that works with your brain and your lifestyle. And if you liked this video, then I suggest you watch this video. I talk about a 5-minute habit that I do every day to help you keep and maintain your organization of your photos, especially as it comes to when you want to create keepsake videos or like memory videos or photo books or any of that kind of thing. If you liked this video and you want to see more content like this, then please hit subscribe. There's a lot more where this came from, and I would love to have you along for the journey. And so, I'll see you in the next one.