Only some photos show up when searching People and Pets on devices

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Only some photos show up when searching People and Pets on devices

Why doesn’t Photos show ALL the assigned pics? i have done all the things (restart, system update, etc.) this has been happening for quite a while. In People and Pets only some of the photos show up, certainly not all. I have assigned names and pictures, have double checked them. I would like to see ALL of my dog’s pictures when I search under her name and photo in People and Pets, but only 88 show up. This also happens on my iphone. Maybe they only show some as a rule, but then why have it at all?

iPad Air, iPadOS 18

Posted on Sep 17, 2025 4:00 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 18, 2025 7:56 AM in response to sisclary

Photos goes through some remarkable processes to identify faces, and they're not telling exactly how. Maybe they use something like the ratio of the eye separation to the nose-mouth distance, or something like that. But to do that, you'd have to have the eyes and nose and mouth all visible. And how the heck does it know what's a nose. It rarely picks something that's not a face. Here's one of my favorites from my front lawn:

But it can't recognize a head that's turned, or half hidden, or faded, or underexposed, and such. And there are some that it misses that make no sense to me, but apparently it does to the computer.

On a Mac we can circle people that Photos didn't recognize as faces, and we can have them included in a People/Pet album, but this isn't available in iOS or iPadOS. If you would like Apple to add features, let them know here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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