Photos app People & Pets glitch

A few months ago five new people automatically showed up on the People section of my Photos app, except they were greyed out. All the photos in the individual albums were displayed just fine, but their cover picture (which is also the little circle icon on the main page) is greyed out and there is no way to identify which photo that is either. They also cannot be named for some reason, when I go to change their names or assign them to an already existing contact nothing happens. They can’t be removed either which is really what I’m trying to do. I reset and restored my phone and the issue still persists. I absolutely do not want to fix this by backing up my photos into iCloud or something, so what do I do now? Why is this happening?

iPhone 12, iOS 17

Posted on Aug 31, 2024 8:53 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 31, 2024 10:06 AM

Hello Ozzie1910,

Your response was very confusing and deeply unhelpful as I’d already tried everything you recommended (of course I tried naming those people in different ways and of course I’ve “connected my phone to Wi-Fi, locked it and connected it to power” for Photos to optimize in the background but it’s been a month so clearly that doesn’t work) but something else that was mentioned made it work. Assigning a key photo to each person somehow enabled me to name them and/or remove them from People & Pets. The photos app never required me to do this manually before and always picked the key photos automatically but not anymore I guess


Thank you very much for your response

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 31, 2024 10:06 AM in response to Ozzie1910

Hello Ozzie1910,

Your response was very confusing and deeply unhelpful as I’d already tried everything you recommended (of course I tried naming those people in different ways and of course I’ve “connected my phone to Wi-Fi, locked it and connected it to power” for Photos to optimize in the background but it’s been a month so clearly that doesn’t work) but something else that was mentioned made it work. Assigning a key photo to each person somehow enabled me to name them and/or remove them from People & Pets. The photos app never required me to do this manually before and always picked the key photos automatically but not anymore I guess


Thank you very much for your response

Aug 31, 2024 9:15 AM in response to AuroraButterfly

Don’t assign the name from your contracts because it won’t work, example, in the gallery one pic where and Mary smith is there then when you add a name don’t use Mary smith from contacts just add Mary smith the next and done , when the app photos it’s in the background and iPhone connected to WiFi and the charger the app photos will scan every photo where Mary appears and set all at the Mary smith people album then select from Mary smith album any photo hold it down then select set as main photo and that will be the cover for Mary smith album , there is not glitch no even a bug , people and pet album must be create manually the first time because when toy make new pics from Mary smith all those new photos will be uploaded to the Mary smith album every time your iPhone it’s WiFi and charging

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Photos app People & Pets glitch

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