Sorting ten years of phone photos without losing your weekend
Most people have somewhere between ten and fifty thousand photos on their phone and no idea what is in them. The good news is that the photo apps from Apple and Google already run image recognition on your library. You do not need to install anything.
Search by words first
Type a word into the search box of your photo app: "beach", "dog", "receipt", "whiteboard". The app has already tagged most pictures with those categories. This is the fastest way to find the thousand screenshots and receipts that are cluttering everything else.
Delete in bulk, but with a filter
Search for "screenshot", select all, and look through the grid before deleting. Then do the same for "document" and "receipt". Move anything you might need to a dedicated album first. We recommend doing one category per evening rather than everything at once; mistakes happen when you are tired.
Let the app group people and places
Both major photo apps build albums for faces and locations automatically. Name the faces once, and from then on you can find every picture of a person in two taps. This is also the easiest way to build a shared album for a family member.
The part the app will not do for you
- Deciding which of the twelve near-identical photos of the same sunset to keep. Some apps suggest duplicates; the final choice is yours.
- Choosing what to print. Make a "Print" album and add to it as you go.
- Backing up. Confirm your backup is actually running before deleting anything.
A note on privacy
Face grouping happens on your device in both major apps, and you can turn it off in settings. Read the privacy page of your photo app once; it is shorter than you expect.