I am on IOS 26.1.3 (a) using an iPhone 16 pro max. I am trying to add new photos to my Featured Photos. I cannot add them and have searched the internet and all of the options that are listed do not work. I only have 36 photos in the Featured Photos tab. Within the Featured Photos tab there is no place to add a new photo. I have at least 50 photos I have “favorited.” None of them are showing up in the Featured Photos tab. Please help.
Well after an hour on the phone with Apple I have a solution. There is no solution. The photos are randomly selected by the phone and they do auto - populate. You cannot add photos, however, you can delete the photos.
Well after an hour on the phone with Apple I have a solution. There is no solution. The photos are randomly selected by the phone and they do auto - populate. You cannot add photos, however, you can delete the photos.
Well, the featured photos are meant as a surprise for us. Apple is looking automatically for photos we have not looked at for a long time and bringing them to our attention. That is why the favorites are not all appearing as featured photos.
Sometimes there are bad surprises, photos we have forgotten to delete or don't want to be reminded of. I would never, ever show the featured photos in a place where others can see them or where they would distract me when driving.
Featured Photos is a little gift that Apple gives us to automatically choose some random pictures-- I rather like seeing it in the morning widget. But as markwmsn says, we can make our own albums with our own choices for featured pictures. Get back with us if you need help in marking Favorites and in making albums…
What I am trying to accomplish is using this feature in my widget section of Apple Car Play. When you select Photos for a widget you have two options. Photos or Featured Photos. If you select Featured Photos it only shows the ones that Apple auto populates. That is why I am trying to populate what I want to into Featured Photos. But it sounds like I can’t do that.
As far as I know, only the phone itself can decide to add a photo to Featured Photos.
xcwox wrote: …The photos are randomly selected by the phone and they do auto - populate.
That's what we started with. You need a different widget--one that allows you to choose an album rather than using the choices in the current one. I have no idea if that's been written. Widgets that appear in CarPlay have to be approved. I imagine that Apple wouldn't want a widget that is too distracting.
They already gave us a way to flag our Favorite photos and an entire system for gathering photos in Albums and Folders. I assume they created Featured for photos the automation thought were worth bringing to our attention, but that's just my guess.
Ahh--then this is a widget question rather than a Photos question--would have been good to know that. I looked in the iPhone Community, and I didn't see much help--but I was not very thorough. You might try asking your question there, but give the needed details.
I see that there are iPhone apps that do something with widgets-- perhaps one of those will provide the widget you need.
Actually it’s not a widget issue. Because the photos that populate in Featured Photos are the ones showing up in the widget. I want to change the Featured Photos to photos I want so I can have them show up in the widget. Which makes it a Featured Photos issue. Widget works fine.
In summary, what you actually want is a way to flag photos in some way so that the widget section of Apple Car Play can display them. That might be a way to add them to Featured Photos, a way to display Favorites in the widget, or a way to display a specific Album/Albums in the widget. (That last might exist; I don't have Car Play to test.)
You might want to ask Apple staff directly for such a method through their defined Feedback path:
Don't expect a direct response, but we have been assured that Apple has staff assigned to read submissions there and forward the ideas up the line to the decision makers.
Well that would explain a lot. Stupid that I can’t decide what I want as a featured photo.
No. In summary I’m just trying to add photos from my Photo Library to Featured Photos. I have about a 100 photos I would like to add.
OK, then use that same link to tell them that you want to be able to do that.
Cannot Add New Photos or Existing Photos to Featured Photos.
