I sync photos directly from iMac to iPhone (iCloud sync “forgets” faces and is not an option). The synced photos are on my iPhone under “From my iMac”, but I can’t do any searches on them. Can anyone help?
iPhone 16 Pro Max, iOS 26
Pictures sent from a computer at a phone, the From My Mac pictures, are not "owned by Photos, and they're not fully under Photos' control. They can't even be deleted or edited, for instance, but must be managed through the Mac's Finder. The idea for this pre-iCloud system was that these pictures were just for temporary viewing on the phone.
iCloud Photos is the method we use to fully share our pictures among our Macs, iPhones, iPads, etc. I have no clue what you mean by, "iCloud sync “forgets” faces." It works fine for me. Not exactly the same, but for my son-in-law that I just looked at, I have 376 on my Mac and 378 on my iPad-- pretty close when I've been working with the pictures today. iCloud is a true synchronization, not just a transfer.
Thank you. This is very helpful in understanding what the relationship is between Photos on the two devices. (By “forgetting faces “ I mean that the facial identifications made in my iMac are lost in large numbers on both devices after syncing to iPhone. i have over 200 people identified by face, but take for example one person whom I may have identified by face 1000 times: after sync with iPhone, I may lose the facial recognition on 200 photos. The photos remain on both devices after syncing but the faces are reclassified as “unnamed “. This loss occurs on BOTH devices after syncing. The only recourse is to re-identify all 200 faces again on my iMac, which are, of course, lost again on the next sync. When this happens a couple times a month, to dozens/hundreds of photos on multiple people, it gets too much to handle. I have new devices operating the most updated software; multiple visits with Apple Support techs have been unsuccessful in fixing).
Synchronizing with iCloud is probably the best way to preserve face names, especially those identified manually on the Mac. Face recognition is quite volatile. The algorithm may change with each OS update. Face IDs are not especially transferrable metadata, since there is no standard. A better idea, in addition to using Face ID, is to use keywords and captions.
Though it has a slightly different purpose in mind, but this might be useful:
Saving Face Names for Genealogy
I like the idea of using keywords and captions. I've started doing that, as well as titling my photos. With 25,000+ photos, though, I have a long way to go! Probably only about 10% of my photos have either keywords or captions, though I'm a bit better at titles. Thank you also for the link to the genealogy info -- I've become more interested in my heritage as I have matured, (I'm even pursuing dual citizenship now - USA/Italy), and that link is a welcome asset. Well done!
As far as iCloud being the best way to preserve face names, my long and sad experience is just the opposite. iMac's OSX has preserved face names extremely well now for the last 3 years, even from upgrade to upgrade. It was only when I used iCloud Photos as the intermediary before that hundreds of photo faces I'd previously named on the iMac for multiple people started to disappear from all my devices, even from the original photos on my iMac. (Sometimes complete people disappeared too!) I worked with "Mike" at Apple Support from Jan 21, 2023 to April 25, 2023 to try to get the face names to sync properly via iCloud. We were completely unsuccessful. Only by moving my photos off of iCloud Photos and directly syncing my iMac to my iPhone was I able to preserve, and transmit, the faces I worked so hard to identify. I will try some of your other suggestions from your link, too.
Thanks for your insights!
I am having a similar experience regarding named faces as Richard has reported.
Named faces can vanish occasionally after a major system upgrade or with iCloud syncing for two reasons,
Usually, when all devices are running compatible system versions, that are not differing much, the detected faces will sync well with iCloud and rename stable.
But after a major system up the Photos.app may need to run the face detection again, and may find some faces in a slightly different position. Some faces may not even be detected again. When in doubt, Photos will leave these faces "unnamed" and we will have to confirm the previously assigned name again. Assigning keywords will help to fix these problematic faces quickly. An added bonus will be the keywords will be exported, when we export the photos.
Excuse me- by “loss on syncing”, I mean by using iCloud Photos as the interface. Directly syncing avoids this problem.
Search iPhone for photos directly synced from iMac
