Photos Faces (People) Not Sync’ing Across Devices

Most faces names should be syncing between your devices with iCloud Photos.

Initially, Apple did not sync the faces between the devices at all with iCloud Photos for privacy reasons. We had to tag all faces on all devices manually. This has changed with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, when Apple changed the way the face detection and face recognition are handled radically. Since then, the faces I name on my Mac are usually syncing to my other devices - my other Macs, my iPad, my iPhone.

But there are some differences, depending on the type of device and the system versions. Whenever a software update is adding an improved algorithm for the face detection and face recognition, the devices with the newer software will scan the library again for faces. This can result in additional detected faces, shifted faces, or missing faces. We will have to confirm some detected faces again, if Photos has detected an additional face or a slightly shifted face on one device. And only the faces that could be detected automatically on each device seem to be syncing. The faces that I have circled manually on my Macs do no longer seem to sync to my iPhone or iPad since macOS 12 Big Sur. The manually marked faces used to sync from my Mac to my iPhone and iPad, but the does no longer seem to happen.

I really really REALLY hope they figure out a way to sync the manually added names to the photos... I mean.. its a MASSIVE project so most of us do it piece meal and we have multiple devices. Lets say... um... you know.. you are on your iPhone.. maybe... in the bathroom and have 5 minutes... its insane that if I manual name a person in photos it won't sync to my other devices....

PLEASE apple at least let people opt into this...

I am now understanding from this thread that this is a feature NOT a bug.... but it explains how frustrated I've been so many times when I KNOW I've edited names and then I'm out with my iPhone and search and it does not show up.... cause I have to name them on my iPhone, my computer, my laptop, and my iPad SEPARATELY??? come on.. thats dumb... I'm sorry....

According to Apple’s support page

Use the People album in Photos on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch – Apple Support (UK)

“And when you have iCloud Photos turned on, the people you favorite or name stay up to date across your Apple devices.”

I have yet to understand what this means. My interpretation (and hope) would be that if I go to People → Peter (for example), I would see the same exact 300 photos, regardless of whether I look on my iPad, iPhone, or Mac. And when I take a photo with my iPhone that includes Peter, each device would now show 301 photos of Peter.

However this is clearly not what happens. Peter is recognized in 300 photos on my iPhone, 189 photos on my Mac, and 244 photos on my iPad. I get that facial recognition is happening on device, and that’s fine, but what should happen is that when Peter is recognized on my iPhone for example, that photo should then be marked in iCloud itself as “Peter” so that every device sees that photo as including Peter. This does not happen. So what does the Apple support article mean?

All,

First off, I'll add to the chorus of people who (a) are experiencing discrepancies and (b) believe this is an issue that Apple should work hard to fix. Personally, I have 150k+ photos that span 8 decades (scanned some 7k family photos this summer), so I am insanely grateful Photos can now handle 150k+ photos without issues, and am really impressed with face detection improvements over the past few years. That said, I feel that the face recognition feature is still something of a "black box" beta product, and would love for it to be refined in the coming iterations.

Generally, teaching the algorithm by going over unrecognized faces is very time-consuming, and could be improved with a few targeted improvements; for example:

• On iOS there is a very useful way in which similar unrecognized faces are grouped, and you only have to assign a name to the group once - this is not available on OS X, sadly, but should be! (annoyingly, faces thus named on iOS don't sync to OS X but for a single picture - for the other pictures the "Unknown" tag remains, but the face disappears from the Info pane, weirdly...)
• There should be a filter to pull out photos with "Unknown"/unrecognized faces (right now there is nothing on iOS, and on OS X there is only the imperfect "Person is <BLANK>" condition); ideally, you could then reorder such photos in descending order of how a similar unrecognized person appears
• There should be a clear "Force face re-evaluation" button in Photos, which would ideally both (a) force Photos to look again for faces where it had previously missed them and (b) force Photos to try to automatically recognize among "Unknown" faces a person for whom you just did a bunch of reviews ("yes, this is John" / "no, this is not John") or whom you tagged manually...
• ...and if this is very time-consuming and requires a lot of time, Apple should be clear about how long it'll take, so that people don't try to do too much manually when e.g. if they'd only waited a day or two Apple's algorithm could resolve a good chunk of the issues
• Oh, and finally - I just confirmed that People do not sync for the new Shared Library, and needless to say I absolutely think they should (that said, I am once again very thankful for this new feature, which will be super-helpful for my family)

Kriss

I could probably go on, but thee

Hello, BKPhotos.

We want to make sure you reach the right team for help with your Photos concern, so we recommend that you contact Apple Support directly. Depending on your region, you may be able to reach them here: Get Support.

Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities and have a wonderful day.

Hi I have the exact same issue. all the photo library is syncing fine but there is discrepancies across each device for the people album. for example. John on iPhone shows as 700 but John on iPad or Mac shows as maybe 620 or 590. this seems to be a wider issue. I have left apple feedback maybe if yourself or others do too they may come up with a fix.

my guess is that Maybe the syncing mechanism being used across each device is slightly different and thus leaving to different outcomes across each device. in theory this feature is meant to work flawless but it doesnt. hopefully it will be fixed in the coming months thanks

I think I have part of a solution. At least it's a good work-around for me.

This has been annoying me for a long time (>50K photos, 3 devices).

When working on my iMac Photos, I keep my MacBook Pro and iPhone Photos open at the same time.

99% of the photos data are sync'ed in the proper way (in particular the faces are important for me, the tags are less important, so I can't say anything about that).

This percentage goes down when I work on the MacBook Pro or the iPhone (both I only bought recently), or when they're autosync'ed later.

Thanks. Yeah I didn’t think it would. I’ve learnt to just accept this is how the feature works tbh. It’s still a great feature but tbh I hardly use it so no big deal.

have you noticed this discrepancy for a while

thanks

Yes, it’s never worked the way I think it should. I agree, I need to just accept it. I’ve decided that my iPhone will contain the most complete set of faces, and it’s only on there that I confirm additional photos, etc.

Perhaps Apple simply syncs the people’s metadata (name, favorite or not, key photo), and that’s how it’s designed, but I think it’s pointless to have each device scan for faces if they’ll all be different.

Oh wow.. this is a FEATURE not a bug? I swear they have synced in the past have they not? I've never done a numbers by numbers look but I've tagged on various machines over the years and I swear they have.... so the location metadata and the edits sync but the names DO NOT??? that is insane... crap... I wasted a lot of time....

is there anyway to manual sync them through LAN or direct or...? what the heck this is crazy if true....

I think it’s always been like this. Sometimes it seems Apple is a little too obsessed with “privacy”, when either it should at least be a choice users can make, or there are ways to solve the issue (like full end to end encryption of the photos library in iCloud).

It’s really fun when I reinstall iOS and realize I now have 0 faces scanned and have to start over from scratch!

Yeah same for me. This feature never seemed to work flawlessly. Most photos do only some missing. Anyway it’s only minor the rest of operating systems work great.

hopefully if this is normal behaviour apple will correct it in the future

That is very interesting. I will have to do a test because the two photos that made me realize this was happening last night I had edited them and the circles or in congruent on the faces. I wonder if that lines up consistently.

Yes this is what is happening for me as well

thanks

Nothing has changed in iOS 16 fyi