How to gather every photo of one person on iPhone or Mac
Apple Photos already groups photos by face on your device. That makes it the fastest way to find twenty years of one person's photos. Menu names move around between versions, so if something is called slightly differently on your device, look for the closest match.
On iPhone or iPad
- Open Photos and find People (in recent versions it's called People & Pets and sits in the collections below your library; in older ones it's under the Albums tab).
- Tap the person. If they aren't there, they may not have been named yet: tap a photo of them, swipe up, and name the face so Photos can gather the rest.
- Tap Select and pick the photos you want. Drag your finger across thumbnails to select a run of them at once.
- Tap the share button, then Add to Album and make a new album, for example "Grow-up reel".
- Open Grow-Up Reel in Safari, tap Choose photos, go to Albums (or Collections) in the picker, open your new album and select the photos.
The picker hands the photos to the page as JPEG, normally with the date they were taken; if one lands in the wrong place, tap it and set the date. Nothing is uploaded: the photos go from your photo library straight into the page on your phone.
On a Mac
- Open Photos and click People (or People & Pets) in the sidebar.
- Double-click the person to see all their photos.
- Select the ones you want. Click one, then Command-click to add more, or press Command-A to select all.
- Choose File › Export › Export Unmodified Originals and pick a folder. Originals keep their full quality and the date they were taken.
- Open Grow-Up Reel and drag the folder onto the page.
Exported originals from an iPhone are usually HEIC files. Safari opens them. Chrome and Edge can't, so if you use one of those, choose File › Export › Export Photos with JPEG as the kind instead.
Picking the right photos
- Choose one or two photos per year, where the face is large and turned mostly towards the camera.
- Skip photos where sunglasses, hands or hats hide the eyes; the reel lines up faces by the eyes.
- Group photos are fine. In the tool, tap the photo and tap the right face.
- Edited copies and screenshots may carry the wrong date. You can fix any date in the tool.
Does Grow-Up Reel use Apple's face recognition?
No. Apple Photos groups faces on your device; Grow-Up Reel only receives the photos you pick. It doesn't recognize anyone at all: it finds where faces are so it can line them up, inside your browser.
The person I want isn't in People. What now?
Scroll through the library or search by a place or year, and add photos to the album by hand. Faces are found in any photo you add, named or not.