How to find every photo of your child on your iPhone

Most parents have thousands of photos on their phone and want the ones of their child: for a birthday slideshow, a photo book, a grandparent, or just to scroll back through. Scrolling through years of camera roll is slow, and screenshots, receipts and photos of other people's children get in the way. This article shows how to find every photo of your child on an iPhone, first with what's built in, then with the Photohawk app.

Start with the Photos app

The Photos app on iPhone already groups faces into people, on the phone itself. To use it:

1. Open Photos and find the People collection (called People & Pets on recent versions of iOS).
2. Find your child's face and tap it. If they haven't been named yet, tap Add Name.
3. Once named, type their name in Photos' search to see their photos.

A few things help it work better:

• Give it time. Face grouping runs in the background, mostly while the phone is charging and locked. After a big import, leave it overnight.
• Look for duplicates. Children often appear as two or three separate groups, especially as babies. Merge them when you spot them.
• Fix mistakes. If a photo of a cousin has crept in, remove it from the group, so the phone learns the difference.

Why children are hard to group

Face grouping compares the features of faces. Children make that hard in ways adults don't:

• They change fast. A newborn and the same child at three can look less alike than two different toddlers.
• Siblings look alike, especially at the same age.
• They don't hold still. Faces are often turned away, blurred or half hidden behind a toy.

So expect some gaps, especially in the baby years. The fix is the same in any app: merge groups that are the same child, and correct photos that are in the wrong group.

Get the photos onto your phone first

You can only find photos your phone has. A lot of family photos arrive by WhatsApp or from a partner's phone and never reach your photo library. On iPhone, WhatsApp keeps media inside WhatsApp unless you tell it to save them. Our step-by-step guide to saving WhatsApp photos to your camera roll shows how.

How the Photohawk app makes it quicker

Photohawk Family is our app for your family's photos, coming soon to iPhone. It looks through your camera roll for faces, people and things, so you can find any photo by who or what is in it.

• Everyone, grouped. Turn on face grouping and Photohawk groups the faces in your photos into people. Name your child once and find them in every photo, from every year. If two groups are the same person, merge them; if a photo is in the wrong group, take it out.
• Built with children in mind. Photohawk never puts two faces from the same photo into one person, so a parent holding a baby doesn't merge the two, and you can confirm close calls ("Is this Maya?") as you go.
• Search the way you remember. Search by person, by thing, by place or all together: "Maya with a dog", "Maya birthday cake", "Maya Lisbon".
• A page for each person, with all their photos sorted by month, so you can scroll back through the years.

Private by design

Photos of your children are some of the most personal data on your phone, so it matters how an app treats them:

• Faces are found on your phone. The face data Photohawk makes isn't in your phone backups.
• Face grouping is off until you turn it on, and turning it off deletes your face data.
• Cloud face matching is a separate choice. To group people more accurately, Photohawk can send small face cut-outs (never your photos) to our secure cloud, where that face data is only yours. Rather not? Keep it all on your phone.
• Photos leave your phone only when you share them.

Our article on face grouping and privacy explains each of these in more detail.

Sharing what you find

Once you've found the photos, you'll want to send some. Grandparents in particular never get enough. In the Photohawk app you can send someone a day of photos, the ones you pick, or new photos of your child automatically, and the people you share with receive them free. Children themselves are never set up as recipients: photos of them go to the adults you choose. See sharing photos with grandparents automatically.

A quick routine that keeps it tidy

• Once a month, open your child's group and merge any new duplicates.
• Turn on WhatsApp's Save to Photos for your family chats.
• Delete screenshots and blurry near-duplicates as you go.

Photohawk Family is coming soon to iPhone, with Android to follow; keep an eye on photohawk.com for the launch. For a longer view, read organising photos of kids as they grow.