Manually name faces in photos

I can no longer manually name faces in Photos. Why?

I have an iMac running Mac OS Sonoma 14.6.1

Posted on Jan 11, 2025 9:25 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 12, 2025 4:04 AM

What happens, when you try to add a faces circle manually? Where is it going wrong?


If the faces circle cannot be centered around a face, you have several options, as described here: Work-Around: What to do, when the Faces Circle is jumping around - Apple Community


"Written for Photos for Mac, version 5 or later.

In Photos for Mac we cannot only name the faces that have been detected by Photos, but also the faces of people that Photos could not detect as a face. We just have to open the Info for the photo, click the + button to add a faces circle and drag the circle to the face we want to tag and adjust the size.


Sometimes it happens, that we cannot place the circle around the face, it will jump back to the middle of the photo.

There are several things we can try:

  • We can simply enter the name with the circle in the middle of the photo. Usually we can drag it to the face, once the name has been entered.
  • Or we can first click into the background of the photo, away from the faces circle. When we then drag it to the face, it will stay put. This fix has been posted by the user The Digital Wonder , see: When I move the "click to name" it moves … - Apple Community. This is working even better.
  • If all fails, quit Photos and restart it. Sometimes we even need to restart the Mac."


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 12, 2025 4:04 AM in response to Billabongbushband

What happens, when you try to add a faces circle manually? Where is it going wrong?


If the faces circle cannot be centered around a face, you have several options, as described here: Work-Around: What to do, when the Faces Circle is jumping around - Apple Community


"Written for Photos for Mac, version 5 or later.

In Photos for Mac we cannot only name the faces that have been detected by Photos, but also the faces of people that Photos could not detect as a face. We just have to open the Info for the photo, click the + button to add a faces circle and drag the circle to the face we want to tag and adjust the size.


Sometimes it happens, that we cannot place the circle around the face, it will jump back to the middle of the photo.

There are several things we can try:

  • We can simply enter the name with the circle in the middle of the photo. Usually we can drag it to the face, once the name has been entered.
  • Or we can first click into the background of the photo, away from the faces circle. When we then drag it to the face, it will stay put. This fix has been posted by the user The Digital Wonder , see: When I move the "click to name" it moves … - Apple Community. This is working even better.
  • If all fails, quit Photos and restart it. Sometimes we even need to restart the Mac."


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Manually name faces in photos

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