Organizing photos and videos in Apple Photos app on iPhone 11

I use an iPhone 11 and want to know how better to organize pictures and videos in the Apple Photos app.


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iPhone 11, iOS 18

Posted on Apr 7, 2025 7:03 AM

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Apr 7, 2025 7:32 AM in response to travelingwoman333

Define "better".

What is better for you?

What exactly are you trying to accomplish?


The Library view sorts by Date taken or created.

You can have it group photos by year or month taken by tapping on the appropriate button.


Tap to change the sort order or add filters etc...


click here ➜ Customize the Photos app on iPhone - Apple Support

click here ➜ Filter and sort the photo library on iPhone - Apple Support


Explain what you want to have happen, and we may be able to help you get the Photos app in a way that works for you.

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Apr 7, 2025 8:04 AM in response to travelingwoman333

travelingwoman333 wrote: …I use an iPhone 11 and want to know how better to organize pictures and videos in the Apple Photos app.

There are at least 3 important ways to organize pictures:


(1) Put your pictures in Albums. When you "put a picture into an album," its name is added to a list of pictures from the Library that display together when the album is clicked, kind of like a music playlist, but for pictures. So two albums can both have the same picture name in their lists (like two playlists with the same song,)  and that picture will show up when you click either album, but there's only one picture file-- it's just on multiple lists. And when you remove a picture from an album, its name remains in the lists of other albums, and the file still remains in your Library. You don't get fewer pictures in your Library because you remove one from an album; you just get fewer names in the album list.


So albums give a specific view of your pictures. The picture of "Aunt Ethel at the Grand Canyon" can be in the "Aunt Ethel" album with other pictures of Aunt Ethel, and it can also be in the "Grand Canyon"  album with pictures of other people at the Grand Canyon. And it can also be in a the "September 2015" album with other things that happened then. Each album is pointing to a single file stored in the Photos Library, so having pictures in multiple albums takes up no more storage space. As you can imagine, this is very powerful in organizing pictures.


So, when you put pictures "into" albums, don't think of just one album-- think of al the albums you might want to put it in. You cannot have too many albums! See next:


(2) If you have lost of pictures, Put your albums into Folders. Folder can have albums, and they can have folders that have albums in them. (But folders don't hold individual pictures.) Since I've been doing this for awhile, I have folders for events inside folders for years inside folders for decades. I also have folders for "Best Picture" albums and folders for "Wife's family" albums, and so on.


Since you can put albums into folders, it never hurts to have extra albums. If you have a bunch of albums you don't look at very often, then you can put them all in a "Not Used Much" folder, and all of those only take up a single space in Albums section of the iPhone.


(3) Use Captions. List important stuff in the caption section of pictures. Then you can use that information in a search to help find the picture you want.

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Organizing photos and videos in Apple Photos app on iPhone 11

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