Search for unnamed faces in Photos App (5.0)

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David Strait Author

Level 2

450 points

Search for unnamed faces in Photos App (5.0)

Is there a way to search for faces in photos that have not been named?

Doesn't look like it, but thought I'd ask if someone has found a way.

iMac Pro, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 6, 2020 11:46 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,321 points

Sep 9, 2020 2:12 AM in response to David Strait

Se also this user tip for more details, David:

How to find all Unnamed Face in Photos 5 Catalina

It has been different in each version of Catalina, what will happen when we combine two rules "Person is " and "Person is not ".

In the previous version if Catalina the smart album "Match all" "Person is Leonie" and "Person is not Leonie" would find all photos of me, where I am together with another person, but this does no longer work. This smart album is now empty. But I can find all photos with an unnamed face in any group photo showing me: "Match all" "Person is Leonie" and "Person is not "

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Answer 2

PhillipU

Level 2

470 points

Sep 8, 2020 6:37 PM in response to David Strait

Someone else showed me a way to create a smart album that does this. On earlier versions of Photos you had to search for "Person is not %" but on the current version you have to set your smart album criterion to "Person is <blank>" where <blank> is literally an empty field. It's not 100% accurate but it does the job for me.

You could also add additional criteria for hiding ones that you've already reviewed and perhaps tagged with a keyword to indicate this. I tag mine with "FacesReviewed" and exclude those from my smart albums so I'm not constantly reviewing the same set of photos.

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Answer 3

David Strait Author

Level 2

450 points

Sep 9, 2020 10:35 AM in response to léonie

leonie,

Wow… you solved another one for me (or at least 96% of the solution). I used a variation of your method and it successfully identified 1257 photos out of 1306 photos with “unnamed” faces. Here is a summary of what I did.

- Named the first “unnamed“ face on a photo “unkown 00”

- Named any other “unnamed” faces in the same photo sequentially… unkown 01, unkown 02, etc.

I created a smart album as follows:

- Person is “Unknown 00”

- Person is “ <blank> ”

This album resulted in about 150 photos that had additional “unnamed” faces. I added the additional face names (unknown xx) to these photos until I got down to 49 photos. These 49 photos did not have an unnamed face. I don’t know why it didn’t work on these 49 photos, but apparently “Photos” thinks there is an unnamed face, but doesn’t display the “unnamed face” circle. The photos in this group tend to be large groups of people — but not always. Possibly the “unnamed face” is on the edge of the photo and the circle is “displayed” off the photo (a possible bug).

Anyway… I would say you solved this for me. Thanks again!

David

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Search for unnamed faces in Photos App (5.0)

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