Key Takeaways

  • Review and delete unnecessary photos to save storage space. Enable iCloud Photos to store full-sized photos.
  • Organize photos by date using the default Photos app. Use the search function to find specific photos by month or event.
  • Organize photos by person by setting up face recognition. Tag faces with names to automatically group and search photos by person.

If you're an iPhone user who takes pictures regularly, you'll likely have thousands of photos in your library taking up so much storage space. That's when organization becomes essential. Fortunately, there are so many ways to go about it.

Before You Begin: Some General Space-Saving Tips

While we will break down the specific ways that you can organize your photos, we also wanted to give you a few space-saving tips to start:

  1. Always review your photos. It's easy to take a few photos and forget about them, but those "few photos" can add up. To avoid a future backlog, get into the habit of looking over your photos after you've shot them. Quickly decide on which ones to delete.
  2. Don't keep near-duplicate photos. Taking a bunch of similar photos can give you many options—but if the photos are nearly identical, you don't need all of them. Get in the habit of deleting duplicate iPhone photos to reduce storage clutter.
  3. Optimize your iPhone storage. If you go to Settings > Photos on your iPhone, you'll see an option called iCloud Photos. Once you enable it, your iPhone will automatically upload and store your full-sized photos on iCloud.

Now that you know how to save space on your iPhone, let's check out organizing your images in more detail.

1. How to Organize Photos on Your iPhone by Date

Each picture you take on your iPhone has metadata. This tells the photo's date, time, location, camera settings, and more, allowing you to search and organize your images by date.

To organize iPhone photos by the date taken:

  1. Open the default Photos app, and ensure you're in the Library view.
  2. You can change the Library view by tapping between Years, Months, Days, and All Photos near the bottom of the screen. This will segment all the photos in your library according to your selection.

But if you're searching for a specific date, month, or even year, you can use the search function of the iPhone's default Photos app. Here's how:

  1. Open the default Photos app and tap on the Search icon.
  2. In the search bar, type in a month or event. In the screenshot above, I chose September.
  3. When you type the month or date you want to see, your phone will display all the photos you took at that time.
  4. From there, you can narrow your selection further. For example, we wanted to look for vehicle photos taken last September. By typing vehicles after September, the app showed all images of vehicles taken that month.

2. How to Organize Photos on Your iPhone by Name

The next best way to organize photos on your iPhone is by person. This is a convenient method to find pictures of you or your friends.

Modern versions of iOS can recognize faces, allowing your iPhone to detect and arrange your photos by person automatically. These unique faces are recognized as individuals, allowing the iPhone to group photos of that person together, regardless of date or event, or even if they're in a group photo.

However, organizing your photos by name or person requires some setup. Here's how to do it:

  1. First, go into the Photos app and tap Albums.
  2. Tap People under People & Places.
  3. Under People, you'll see a bunch of circles with faces. Select one of those faces, and you'll see all the pictures that contain that person.
  4. You'll also see that some people's faces don't have names. To name them, select the face and tap Add Name at the top. Then, type their name in.

After you name that person, all photos with their face will automatically be tagged and searchable by their name.

If you go into the Albums section of the Photos app, you'll also see that your device automatically creates an album for this person under People.

3. How to Organize Photos on Your iPhone by Location

The iPhone Photos app will also sort your pictures by location if you travel a lot. But, just like the previous method, you must set it up first.

When you take a picture with your iPhone, the picture's metadata automatically records the location of your photo—so long as you have Location Services turned on for the Camera app.

To turn on Location Services, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Go to Privacy & Security > Location Services. Make sure the toggle at the top is enabled.
  3. Now, scroll down and select the Camera app.
  4. Make sure While Using the App is selected.

Now that this setting is turned on, your iPhone will automatically geotag new images. It will then sort these location-based photos into a pre-made album.

To view your pictures:

  1. Head to the Albums section of the Photos app.
  2. Under People & Places, tap on Places.
  3. On the map, tap the thumbnail of the place you want to view. You'll see all the pictures from that location.

4. How to Organize Photos on Your iPhone Into Albums

Now, let's say you want to organize your photos into albums. This is the most straightforward method of arranging photos, as you can group photos that span multiple locations, dates, people, or events.

Basically, manual albums are good for anything that your iPhone can't automatically sort on its own.

To create a new photo album:

  1. Launch the Photos app and tap on Albums.
  2. In the top-left corner of the screen, tap the plus (+) sign.
  3. Choose New Album.
  4. Once you tap New Album, you'll be prompted to name the album. After you name it, choose Save.
  5. Once the album is named, you can begin adding photos.

You can also organize multiple albums into folders. For example, if you take photos of different projects for your work, you may want to create a work folder to sort all work-related albums.

  1. Go to your Albums section, then tap the plus (+) sign at the top-left corner.
  2. Choose New Folder.
  3. Name the new folder and tap Save.
  4. Once inside your recently created folder, tap Edit at the top-right corner.
  5. Next, tap the plus (+) sign at the top-left corner.
  6. You can choose New Album for storing photos or tap New Folder to subcategorize your albums.

If there are photos on your phone that you forgot to add to an album:

  1. Go to your Albums section. Tap on Recents.
  2. Tap Select in the top-right corner.
  3. Select the photos that you want to add.
  4. Tap the ellipsis (...) button at the bottom-right corner of your screen.
  5. Select Add to Album. Choose the album where you want to add these photos.

From here on, whenever you need to find photos from a multi-day event, you should be able to go into your Photos app and view the appropriate album.

5. How to Organize Your iPhone Photos on Your Mac

Mac Photos app showing Memories

Another way to organize your iPhone photos is through your Mac. The macOS version of the Photos app mirrors everything you see in your iPhone's Photos app, assuming you're logged into the same Apple ID and have iCloud enabled.

The Photos app in macOS also allows you to sort your photos by People, Places, and dates. You can tag people's faces in Apple Photos to organize their photos by name. To learn more about this app, check out our starter tips for managing your Mac photo library.

Better Organize Photos on Your iPhone

With some quick tips and tricks, you'll be well on your way to organizing photos on your iPhone. Like Google Photos, Apple's built-in Photos app is a potent tool you should take advantage of. To reap most of its benefits especially across your Apple devices, you'll need to pay for an iCloud subscription.