How do I sort People in Photos automatically and not manually!!

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How do I sort People in Photos automatically and not manually!!

It really is a simple question:

How do I sort People in Photos automatically and not manually!!How do I sort People in Photos automatically and not manually!!

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 6, 2020 3:12 PM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

197,047 points

Apr 7, 2020 12:15 AM in response to ElGuadPaso102018

It is no longer possible, since the High Sierra upgrade changed the design of the People album considerably.

Previously, we have been seeing an album of all unnamed faces and have been encouraged to name all people. With High Sierra the People album started to sync with iCloud and with all devices. Now the People album is designed to show only the People most relevant to us, suitable for the tiny iPhone display. Photos is adding only very few people automatically to the People album. The faces thumbnails are now huge. It is quite obvious, that we are expected to keep only a few named people in this album, or we will have to do a lot of scrolling. With only a few named faces there would be no need for a tool to sort the People album. But if we are using the People album differently and have hundreds of people in our People album, we desperately need a way to sort it and structure it.

My People album has currently 887 people in it (37 pages of faces huge thumbnails, that a pain to sort manually by dragging thumbnails around).

I am keeping it organised by adding a prefix to the name of a person. The prefix is indicating the group the person belongs to. And it helps a lot when entering the name of a person. As soon as I enter the prefix, only the people from this group are shown in the list of names. This is a work-around to structure the album, because there are no folders, where we could related groups of people, like families, friends, work related teams, etc together. I sorted the album once, manually, by dragging the thumbnails to the right group. When I add a new person, it will appear at the bottom the People album. I grab it and drag it to the correct group. The groups fit onto one page. So it is easier to arrange the thumbnails with in group manually.

I have already sent a feature request to Apple, requesting a better support for managing large People albums, but it will probably not happen, as long as the majority of users is happy with small People albums with only a few faces. You may also want to send a feature request: Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Answer 2

tygb

Level 9

64,708 points

Apr 6, 2020 11:01 PM in response to ElGuadPaso102018

In people folder , if you select photos and take cursor on top menu bar > view > sort by oldest first is shown a right check mark is over there , but there is no such feature as automatically , you can send feedback https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

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Answer 3

Apr 7, 2020 7:35 AM in response to léonie

Thank you for the information. Although it is really a little hard to believe, I had looked everywhere, so I was pretty sure that there was no function to do the sorting!

From what you are explaining from a design perspective, for example Apple doesn’t want you to have a lot of people entries, what other reason could there possibly be for not having the billeted to sort by name! And I guess,, as you explain, Apple doesn’t want you to do that! This is really pretty sad.

I started without I photos some years ago, and it was important to me to name the people in my pictures! So now that I’ve uploaded everything into iCloud photos I have hundreds of people also. Not as many as you, but enough to require a sorting function!

thanks for the idea about roofing. I will look into that.

I just sent another feedback to Apple asking for the sorting function! That as you say we may never get!!

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