Scan photos for people and pets

Question

Level 1

4 points

Scan photos for people and pets

Hi,

I am the defacto administrator of the family. I am the only person with a mac computer. Then there are a few users that have iphones and ipads in the family. The photos app finds people and pets in my photos gallery in the background when I am going about my day on the computer.

How can I run face and pet recognition on the other photo galleries so that they too may find friends and family. How will I know when the whole gallery is scanned?

I have tried opening the users galleries on using their users on my computer but the process is slow and there is no indication of when it is running or how much of the gallery is left unscanned.

This is especially important now that I have been consolidating all the old photos of all the family members into iCloud photos and reorganizing is going slow without understanding this feature.

-You are the best!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Dec 10, 2025 12:35 AM

Reply

Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,525 points

Dec 11, 2025 9:48 AM in response to Agustr

Mark is right - the Photos.app on the iPhone and iPad is also scanning the photos for faces, depending on the system version on these devices, but this applies to photos and videos that have been saved to iPhone, either by taking them with iPhone or iPad camera or saving them to Photos from an app or syncing them with iCloud Photos. Photos that have been synced from a computer to an iPad or iPhone used to be scanned for faces as well, but this seems to have changed after the upgrade to iOS 26. Which system version is installed on the iPad and iPhone in question? Have the photos been manually synced to the devices or have they been saved from the camera or apps, or synced with iCloud Photos?

Reply

Answer 2

markwmsn

Level 6

16,715 points

Dec 10, 2025 9:35 PM in response to Agustr

The family members with iPhones and/or iPads will have the people and pets in the photos and videos in their libraries recognized by their devices (each device doing the recognition for the library on that device).

Reply

Answer 3

Agustr Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 11, 2025 9:22 AM in response to markwmsn

I dont think iphones or ipads scan for faces at all. I think you need a computer.

Reply