How to Save Face Names in Apple for Genealogy Research

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Sure! Here’s a simple, human-friendly guide to help you manage photo recognition and keep your memories organized:

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Many of us rely on face recognition to help identify people in our photos. However, it’s important to remember that face recognition isn’t perfect and is always changing. Updates to the software may cause faces to be re-scaned and re-identified, so the labels or names it assigns might not stay consistent over time. Since face IDs are not really standard—meaning they don’t always transfer well between devices or updates—it’s best not to depend solely on face recognition for important details.

Instead, a more reliable way to organize your photos is by adding keywords and captions. When you find a picture of your Aunt Bonnie, for example, open her album, select all her photos, and add a keyword like “AuntBonnie.” This way, even if the face recognition gets disrupted later, you can still easily find all her pictures using the keyword search.

You can also add full names and details in the caption field. For example, include her full name, birth and death dates, or even notes like “Richard’s mother.” Use option-return to create new lines if needed. While some devices like iPhones and iPads don’t show keywords or titles in the same way, they do display captions, which can be very helpful when browsing your photos.

Here’s a handy tip: create a Contact Sheet with your photos’ captions. This is a printable or PDF file that shows pictures with their captions underneath. You can then share this with family members and ask them to confirm or add details. This method helps crowdsourcing your knowledge about old pictures.

Adding captions can be a bit tricky because the Info window isn’t very big, but you can type the information somewhere else—like Notes—and then copy and paste it into the caption. When you do this, your search results get better. For example, if you search for “(1862-1929),” Photos will bring up pictures of your great-grandfather, and you’ll see a link to his album with all his photos.

Remember, manually adding names places those people into their albums, which makes it easier to find their pictures later. However, these manual labels don’t help the software recognize faces automatically in the future. For instance, labeling the back of your wife’s head will add that photo to her album, but it won’t teach the software to recognize her in different pictures.

Face tags are especially useful for pictures of many people you may not remember well. If there are a group of faces, a simple list of names on the back of the photo isn’t enough—I’ve found that taking a screenshot of the picture with the names works well. This way, I preserve the face and its labels without depending on recognition software later.

Another clever tip is to categorize face names using prefixes like “RsFam:Aunt Bonnie.” This groups your family photos separately from friends or other groups, keeping your collection organized. It’s a smart method, especially if you have many photos, but I haven’t fully adopted this system myself yet.

In summary, don’t rely only on face recognition. Use keywords, captions, and organized labels to keep your photo collection accurate and easy to search. Creating contact sheets and being specific in your labeling will make finding and sharing old photos much simpler and more enjoyable.