How to organize photos on iPhone

If you have dozens of photos on your iPhone, it might be a challenge every time to scroll and find the picture you need. However, with the tips from this article, you can easily organize photos on your iPhone, as well as declutter your Camera Roll.

Contents

1. What is the difference between folders and albums in iOS photos?
2. How to create albums and folders for photos on iPhone?
3. iPhone photo organization ideas.
4. FAQs

Tip – Declutter iPhone photos

Before you start learning how to create albums for iPhone photos and organize your pictures, we recommend that you declutter your Recents album from duplicate and unneeded similar photos. You can do this with a free software tool from Nektony called Phone Cleaner for Media Files.

Phone Cleaner automatically finds similar photos and the largest media files, helping you easily remove all unneeded digital stuff and free up space in your storage.

Phone Cleaner for Media Files

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What is the difference between folders and albums in iOS photos?

When it comes to organizing photos on iPhone, you might want to create a new album or folder. But what’s the difference between a folder and an album on iPhone? Let’s clarify this.

While albums contain your photos, folders contain your albums. You need just to understand this sort of hierarchy. You can add albums to a folder but you cannot add photos directly to a folder.

When you need to sort and organize photos in the Camera Roll, you need to create an album. If you have too many albums and now there’s a mess of albums on your iPhone, then you can create folders to sort these albums.

Note that you cannot move albums between folders on iPhone. If you need to move an album, you will have to recreate the album in the destination folder, then delete the original album. Thus, before creating albums and folders on your iPhone, we recommend first learning the tips from this article to find out the best way to organize your photos.

How to create albums and folders for photos on iPhone?

As we mentioned before, you can’t just drag albums to the new folders. That’s why we recommend first creating a folder, then creating albums inside this folder.

Here’s how to create a folder in the iPhone Photos app:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Go to the Albums section.
3. Tap the Plus (+) icon on the top.
4. Select New Folder.
5. Enter a name for this folder and tap Save.
6. You will see your new folder in the Albums section in the Photos app.

Follow these steps to create an album in the iPhone Photos app:

1. Open the Photos app and go to the Albums section.
2. Tap the Plus (+) icon in the top-left corner of your screen.
3. Select New Album.
4. Enter a name for this album and tap Save.
5. Select the photos you want to add to this album.
6. Tap Done.

After creating an album, you can add separate photos to it. Here’s how to move a photo to the album on iPhone:

1. Open the photo you want to add to the album.
2. Tap the Share icon.
3. Select Add to Album.
4. Tap the album where you want to move the photo.

After creating a folder, you can organize albums inside it. Here’s how to add an album to a folder in iOS photos:

1. Go to the folder in the Photos app.
2. Tap Edit.
3. Tap the Plus (+) icon and select New Album.
4. Give a name to the album.
5. Select photos to add to this album.
6. Tap Done.

How to delete a photo album from iPhone

Follow these steps to delete an album from your iPhone. The same instructions work for deleting folders from iPhone:

1. Open the Photos app and go to the Albums section.
2. Tap See All.
3. Tap edit.
4. Tap the red icon for the album or folder you want to delete.
5. Tap Delete Forever to confirm.

If you want to rearrange albums, you can do this on the same screen. Tap and drag an album in the order you want them to be displayed.

iPhone photo organization ideas

Arrange photos by date

When you take a picture, your iPhone saves metadata for each photo, including the data of the date when it was taken. Thanks to this, you can arrange your photos by date. Here’s how:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Tap the search icon.
3. Enter the month or event in the search bar, for example, “May.”
4. Your phone will display all the photos taken that month.
5. You can narrow down your search as many times as you need. For example, in your results, you can search for the keyword “park.” You will see all photos taken in a park in May.

Organize iPhone photos by faces

The new iPhones can recognize faces. When you take a new photo, the system automatically recognizes the faces of the people in the photos and groups them. You can give names to faces, mark them as favorites, and then view all photos of a particular person. Here’s how it works:

1. Open the Photos app and go to Albums.
2. Scroll down and find the “People & Places” section.
3. Tap People.
4. You will see a catalog of all the photos that have been recognized by face.
5. Tap a circle and view all photos of a particular person.
6. You can configure and add more photos to the faces that were not automatically recognized by the system.

If you have many friends and family members in the People album, you can mark some people as favorites to easily find their photos later. To add someone to your favorites, tap the heart icon.

Organize photos on iPhone by location

Another great way to organize photos on iPhone is to arrange them by location. But before you do this, you need to enable geolocation on your iPhone.

How to enable Location Services on iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap Privacy.
3. Select Location Services → Camera.
4. Tap Allow location access when using the app.

Once you turn on location for photos, your iPhone will automatically geotag new photos and save this data. Then you can sort your photos by location. Here’s how:

1. Open the Photos app and go to Albums.
2. Scroll down and find the People & Places section.
3. Tap Places.
4. Select the location on the map for which you want to see the photos. You will see the list of photos taken in this place.

On iPhone, you can hide photos. The hidden photos won’t appear in the shared Recent feed or individual albums but will remain on your device. You can see them in a separate folder named Hidden. Here’s how to hide photos on iPhone:

1. Open Photos.
2. Find the image you want to hide and tap the Share icon.
3. Select Hide.
4. Tap Hide Photo to confirm.

Declutter duplicate photos

When organizing photos on your iPhone, don’t forget to clear up all unneeded pictures in your storage. This will free up huge space in your storage and help you find the needed photos much faster. You can easily find and remove duplicate and similar photos with a free application Phone Cleaner for Media Files. Here’s how:

1. Download and open Phone Cleaner on your iPhone.
2. Go to the Similar section and remove unneeded similar and duplicate photos.
3. Go to the Trash section and tap Remove selected.
4. Then you have to empty the Trash folder in the Photos app to remove these photos forever.

Phone Cleaner

Free Download

Supported systems: iOS 11.0 or later

Update Sept. 18 2023

Conclusion

We hope these tips helped you greatly to organize your photos and easily find the ones you need. If you have your own tips, please share them in the comments below.

FAQs