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How to use the Filters in Photos 4.0

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Last modified: Apr 23, 2021 10:56 PM
2 2120 Last modified Apr 23, 2021 10:56 PM

Photos 4.0 on Mojave has a great new feature, the filters, to exclude photos temporarily from the view.I cannot find a page in the user guide (Browse and view photos in Photos on Mac - Apple Support), that explains how to use them, so here are a few hints:

The filter settings will be saved for each album independently, when you switch to a different album, and the next time you open the album the photos will still be filtered, just like you set the filter previously (If Photos are apparently missing from an album, check the filter).


The "Showing" filter in the upper right corner of the viewer lets you specify criteria to select a subset of the photos, matching the criteria. Click the "Showing (only)" in the upper right corner to see the filter rules, that are currently checked. You can set the filter to show only Favorites, or Edited photos, or the media kind photos or video. And you can filter by the applied keywords. Filters are making the use of keywords really powerful. If you check more than one option in the filter, you will only see the items, that are matching all criteria.For example:Here the "Showing" filter has been set to show only the favorite videos.

The filter will not show all your keywords, only the keywords you added to the Quick Group in the Keyword Manager. To configure the keyword selection the filters, open the keyword Manager with ⌘K and then drag the keywords you want in the quick group to the upper pane of the Keyword Manager.

I am using the filters a lot to filter my albums. It saves me from having to create too many smart albums. And it allows me to search smart albums with a combination of rule combined b "Any" and all. I just create a smart album to combine rules with any, then filter it further by additional criteria using a filter.


For additional aspects of using the filter in Photos 6 on Big Sur see:

Keywords in Photos 6 on Big Sur - Discrepancy between the Search Results in Smart Albums and the Filter for Hierarchical Keywords https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250003620


This user tip was generated from the following discussion: Photos missing (?)

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