Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
Our iPhones carry our most precious memories, and it always feels good when you get a Memories notification for a day you remember fondly. However, to get the most out of the excellence of iPhone photos, you also need to play your part and organize them efficiently. This can be to avoid clutter, optimize space, or simply make the app work better for you.
In this guide, we’ll share some tips you can use to manage your photos and enhance the experience on your iPhone.
Protect Your Photos
The most important part of managing your iPhone photos is ensuring that you will always have them. Shattering your iPhone shouldn’t mean losing access to the moments you’ve captured, so ensure that you back them up.
The simplest way of backing up iPhone photos is by using iCloud. This is usually a failsafe option, and it allows you to backup the entire device, not just photos. To ensure your photos are properly backed up on iCloud, go to Settings > Profile > iCloud > Photos. However, if your images are sizeable, the free space offered by Apple won’t be enough, so you may need to purchase extra.
Another alternative for backing up your photos is using an external cloud storage service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. You can also use Google Photos, which is usually associated with your Gmail address.
Utilize Albums and Smart Albums
The Photos app on iPhone is quite powerful, and it makes it easy to manage the photos you have. One of the features it provides is the ability to create a custom album. You can use it to create some for events, locations, sources, or any criteria you want. You can then combine this with iPhone’s Smart Albums. This is a feature that will help you automatically arrange your photos taken in a particular location or featuring a particular person.
However, it requires some help to be efficient. First, ensure that you grant the Photos app access to your location. Second, make its organization more efficient by naming people it suggests. When a person appears multiple times in your library, the app will ask you to name them and even associate them with a contact. Adding a name makes it easy for Photos to create memories for you. It will also be easy to navigate to photos that feature a specific person or simply search their name on the app.
Enable Optimize iPhone Storage
iPhone photos and videos are sizeable and can easily fill up your local storage. Optimizing them is therefore a good way of managing your photos, as you will have room for new memories. iPhone comes with an automatic optimization feature that uploads your full-resolution photos to the cloud and stores local ones in a smaller size. The best part about it is besides saving space, you can still restore your full-resolution photos from the cloud.
To enable optimization, navigate to Settings > Photos and select “Optimize iPhone Storage.” If you still have space, the iPhone will keep your full-resolution photos until you start running out. The action is easily reversible as there’s also an option to “Download and Keep Originals.”
Regularly Delete Unwanted Photos
One of the main goals of managing your photo library is to ensure that it has a quality feel to it. When you are scrolling through suggested albums or memories, you don’t want to find photos that are blurry or where your eyes are closed. This means that you should spare some time to go over your library and clean it up. Look at duplicates, photos you don’t want to keep, and photos that are poorly taken.
You can also delete screenshots, as these fill up your library when they are only used once in most cases. The good thing is that iPhone usually organizes screenshots in a separate folder, so you can easily delete the ones you don’t need. This will help improve the overall appearance of your photo library and make it easier to find and enjoy your best shots.
