How to Find and Organize Photos by Person in Google Photos

Google Photos automatically groups photos by the people in them. Once you label who's who, you can instantly find all photos of any person.

In this guide (5 steps):

1.Find the People album
2.Label faces with names
3.Confirm and correct suggestions
4.Search for a person by name
5.Share a person's album with family

Find the People album

~22s

Open Google Photos. Tap "Search" at the bottom. Scroll down and look for "People & Pets." You'll see circular photos representing groups of faces Google has detected. Each cluster represents a different person, even before you label them.

Quick Tip

Quick Tip: If you don't see People & Pets, go to Photos settings (tap your profile picture > Photos settings) and make sure Face grouping is turned on.

Label faces with names

~18s

Tap on any face cluster to see all photos Google grouped together. Tap "Add a name" or "Who is this?" at the top. Type the person's name — just a first name or a nickname is fine. Tap Done. Google Photos will now recognize this person and label their photos going forward.

Confirm and correct suggestions

~15s

After labeling a face, Google Photos may ask you to confirm additional photos: "Is this the same person?" It shows photo batches and asks if they match. Tap checkmarks to confirm and X's to reject. This helps Google learn more precisely over time.

Search for a person by name

~15s

Once labeled, tap the Search bar in Google Photos and type the person's name. All photos featuring that person appear — across your entire library, going back years. Tap "All photos" to see the complete collection or view them in chronological order.

Share a person's album with family

~15s

Open a person's People album. Tap the three-dot menu (⋮) and look for "Share" or "Create shared album." You can share all photos of that person with another Google Photos user — great for sharing all grandchild photos with grandparents, for example.

You Did It!

You've completed: How to Find and Organize Photos by Person in Google Photos

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Google Photos uses face recognition to automatically group photos by the people in them — creating a "People" album for each person it detects. Once you tell Google Photos whose face is whose, you can search for "all photos of grandma" or "all photos of my son" and instantly see every photo featuring that person across your entire library.

This feature is available in the US (some countries have it disabled due to privacy laws). It's optional — you can use Google Photos without it, but it's genuinely useful for quickly finding photos of specific family members.

The face grouping happens automatically. Your job is to assign names to the faces Google has already detected.

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