How to Organize Photos on Your iPhone

The Photos app on an iPhone is an incredible place to keep your growing library of memories. Thanks to the rise of smartphone cameras, millions of photos are captured every minute of every day. Even as your iPhone automatically organizes photos and videos by date, you can do better, much better. Organizing your own photos makes it infinitely easier to find and relive your favorite memories or show off your child’s first loose tooth. So what is the best way to organize your iPhone? Albums. So first things first, let’s get started with your first album.

1. Create an Album

Getting started with albums couldn’t be any easier. Just open the photos app and look at the top left of the screen where you’ll see a “+” button and tap it. iOS will ask you if you want to create a “new album” or a “new shared album.” The choice is yours, but for most people, the former makes the most sense. Enter the name of your album and then hit “save.” That’s all there is to it as the album is created and easily accessed via the album tab (second from right) on the Photos app.

2. Add to an Album

Once your album is created, adding photos or videos is incredibly easy. If you didn’t add material right when you started the album, don’t worry. Go back into the album and hit “Edit” at the top right. You’ll now see an option for “Add” near the bottom, click that. You can now select any image or video from the entirety of your photo collection on your iOS device and add it to the album.

Add as few or as many photos as you’d like – there’s no limit. Albums can be created for just about anything, whether it’s a trip, place, people or your pets. It’s even easy to add photos to an album later on. Select the photos you’d like to add to an existing album, and in iOS 12 and up, hit the “upward arrow in the box” icon and select “add to album.” You can do this as often as you’d like.

3. Album Ideas

By now there should be total clarity on how to create an album and add photos to it. Learning those steps is just the beginning, as there are even more ways to utilize albums to stay organized!

• Create a weekly album so they are easy to refer back to. This way you’ll never forget where a photo is, and you don’t have to scroll back through hundreds of photos just to find a certain one.
• If creating a weekly album seems like too much, go with the monthly option. It’s just as simple, yet still fairly basic. It will help you stay organized without the worry that you’re being too organized.
• Yearly albums may seem like a stretch, but for many, it’s a perfect solution. Maybe you want to remember the first year of your baby’s life or their first year in school. Creating an album for this purpose will help you quickly locate these memories any time you feel nostalgic.

4. Don’t Forget Favorites!

There is no question that when it comes to photo organization on the iPhone, albums get all the attention. Don’t forget about the favorites option so you can quickly identify the photos that mean the most to you.

Every time you open an image in the Photos app, at the bottom center of the screen is a heart. The first time it’s clicked on a new iOS device, the Favorites album is created. It’s here that you can save your absolute most treasured photos or videos for quickly finding and showing off to your friends, family or colleagues. Don’t get too stressed about adding photos here. Instead, make sure you keep it light and only add the most important images in your collection.

5. For You

One of the most enjoyable aspects of organizing your photos on an iPhone is to utilize the “For You” tab. In this tab, the Photos app searches through your photos and videos to find moments that fit together. Once the app does this, these new albums are presented as “Memories.” There’s no question a level of trust is required here, as you hope the AI groups the right images from trips, nights out, birthday parties, etc. For the most part, the AI does work incredibly well and has hit plenty of home runs over the years. This enables you to look back at wonderful memories grouped together as one album.

6. Declutter

As you use the iPhone camera more and more, there is a good chance you will end up with a library filled with plenty of duplicate photos. Over time, these duplicates can become so plentiful that they all but guarantee your photo library becomes a disorganized mess.

That’s where apps like Remo Duplicate Photos Remover come into play. Apps like Remo help you quickly and efficiently get rid of duplicate photos in just a few taps. Not only can you use Remo to clean up your Photos app, but by doing so, you will also gain back storage space on your device. It’s a win-win for organization and storage. The easy-to-use interface allows you to quickly select or deselect the photos you want to remove. Run it once or twice a month and take back your Photos app.

7. Search

To be clear, Search is not a true organization method in the sense that it will provide long-term cleanup. However, using the Search functionality is a great entry point into building albums and beginning to organize your photos and video.

1. Start by opening up the Photos app and tapping on the “Search” button at the bottom right of the app. You can enter a variety of options, including subject, date, location, name, etc.

2. As your results show up, you can save to an album or start a new one by tapping on “See All.”

3. Now tap on “Select” and start tapping on the photos you would like to use for an album.

4. After you have selected all of the photos you want, tap on the “Share” button at the bottom left of the screen and tap on “Add to Album.”

5. You can now choose from any of your existing albums, or, at the very top of the screen, tap on “New Album” and start fresh.

Conclusion

If organizing photos on the iPhone seems super straightforward, that’s because it absolutely is. Everyone from Grandma to kindergarteners can quickly set up an album and add images within seconds. You can also edit photos on iOS easily with these tools.