Besides the regular photo albums, the Photos app for Mac allows you to create smart albums that help you organize your photos in various ways. By using smart albums, you can categorize your photos using various filters, such as location, date, and people. This tutorial shows how to create and use smart albums in the Mac Photos app.
Tip: be sure to check out all the other great features in the Mac Photos app.
What Are Smart Albums?
Smart albums is a feature in the Mac Photos app that organizes photos in your library that meet the conditions you select. For example, you can create a smart album that gathers photos that were taken using an iPhone 13 Pro. The smart album will then compile all of the photos in your library that meet that condition into one album.
Good to know: if you have an iPhone 13 Pro, learn how to record ProRes videos.
Conditions You Can Select When Creating Smart Albums
You can select one or more conditions when creating a smart album in Mac. Here are the conditions you can select:
- Album
- Date Captured
- Date Added
- Caption
- File name
- Keyword
- Person
- Photo (favorite, hidden, taken with portrait mode, etc.)
- Text
- Title
- Aperture
- Camera Model
- Flash
- Focal Length
- ISO
- Lens
- Shutter Speed
After selecting a condition, you can get to the specifics and choose how smart albums will compile photos based on that condition. For example, you can set a smart album to gather photos taken using or not using an iPhone 13 Pro, photos taken using camera models older than the iPhone 13 Pro, etc.
Tip: do you have content in your Photos app that you want to keep private? Learn how to hide photos and videos on your iPhone.
How to Create a Smart Album
Here’s how to create smart albums on your Mac:
- Launch the Photos app from your Mac’s dock, Spotlight Search, or Launchpad.
- Once the Photos app launches, click on “File” from the menu bar, then select “New Smart Album … ” or press Option + Command + N.
- Add a name for your smart album, then add a condition and click “OK.” If you’d like to apply more than one condition, click the “+” on the far right as many times as you need to, add your additional condition(s), then click “OK.”
- You’ll be taken to an album with your chosen name that contains all of the photos in your library that meet the conditions you selected.
- To verify whether a photo meets your conditions, right-click it, then select “Get Info.”
- The Info window will show you a photo’s file name, the date and time it was taken, camera model used, capture location, and more.
Tip: you can add more information to your photos in the Info window, such as captions and keywords. This information can also be used as conditions when creating smart albums. You can also use the Live Text feature to extract text from photos and videos in Photos.
Finding Photos Without Location Data
By using this condition, you can find all of the photos in your library that don’t have location data. After a smart album gathers these photos, you can manually add location and other data.
To do this, select “Photo -> is not -> tagged with GPS” from the new smart album creation window.
Finding Photos Captured With a Specific Camera
If you have photos in your library that were taken using different smartphone models or digital cameras, you can also create smart albums to organize them.
To create this type of smart album, select “Camera Model,” “includes,” then the camera used in the photos you’re searching for when creating a new smart album.
Finding Photos That Include Specific People
If you want to compile photos that contain a specific person’s face, you need to first add names to the faces detected by the Photos app.
In the Photos app, go to “People” in the left sidebar, then hover over a recognized face. Click on “Name” when it shows up, then add that person’s name.
To find photos containing the person who you named earlier, select “Person,” “includes,” then select the person’s name from the drop-down menu when creating a new smart album.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I create and view smart albums on an iPhone or iPad?
Smart albums is a feature that’s only available in the Photos app for Mac. It also doesn’t sync with iCloud, so even if you have smart albums created using your Mac, you won’t be able to see them on your iPhone or iPad.
Can I create a custom condition?
You can’t create a custom condition, but you can add more than one condition until your smart album is fine tuned to show you only the photos you want to see.
Image credit: Unsplash. All screenshots by Natalie dela Vega.
