How many times have you taken a great photo on your iPhone and wished you could add a note to it? Well, turns out you can! With iOS 14 and later, there’s a somewhat hidden way to add captions to photos, right in the Photos app.
Here's how to app captions to your iPhone photos, and why it's a great idea to do so.
How to Add Captions to Photos on Your iPhone
Adding a caption is incredibly simple, although the feature itself isn’t immediately obvious. Here’s what you need to do:
- Open the Photos app and tap on a photo.
- Swipe up on the photo to reveal more details about it.
- Beneath the photo, tap the Add a Caption text field.
- Type your caption and swipe down on the keyboard or tap return to stop editing and save it.
That’s it! Your caption is saved and will sync to all of your devices using iCloud Photo Library. The caption will also appear in Photos on a Mac when you show the photo’s information panel.
Why You Might Want to Add Captions to Your Photos
Your iPhone or iPad automatically saves the time and location of every photo you take, so why would you want to add captions?
There are actually a couple of useful benefits to photo captions on iOS and iPadOS:
- Add fun notes for later: Write something you want to remember that’s related to the photo but isn’t visible in it.
- Remember who took a photo: If a friend or family member shared a photo with you, you can add their name in the caption field.
- Add details when sharing a photo: When you share a photo from your iPhone in Messages or another app, you can choose to include the captions as well. It’s an opportunity to add more details when sharing.
- Help organize your photos: This is the best part of photo captions—they’re indexed in search, so you can add keywords to help you find the photo later.
- Explain what happens in a video: Make it easier to find the video you're looking for by describing what happens so you don't need to watch everything first.
How to Search for Photo Captions on Your iPhone
The Photos app on iOS and iPadOS already has a powerful search feature. But captions add another dynamic metric to the app's search capabilities.
Write a caption describing the moment you took the picture or add a list of keywords that will help you find it among the thousands of other photos on your phone. Then search for it as you would anything else.
Follow these simple steps if you're unsure:
- Open the Photos app and tap the Search tab.
- Tap the search bar at the top and start typing your query.
- Keep typing or choose one of the suggestions that appears.
Captions are just one of the filters you can use to search through your photos. If you have lots of photo captions with the word “beach,” you can filter further by adding dates, people, and other keywords.
Photo Captions Let You Save More Than Just Images
Adding captions to your iPhone and iPad photos helps you organize them on all your Apple devices. Not only does it make the search function more helpful, but it also allows you to add context to your most important memories.
While you’re adding captions to your iPhone photos, help them look their best with some awesome photo-editing apps on the App Store.