Why doesn’t Photos on iPhone allow me to add tags (keywords)?

Question

Level 1

4 points

Why doesn’t Photos on iPhone allow me to add tags (keywords)?

I noticed today that there is no way to add tags (keywords, labels) in Photos on the iPhone. You can add captions, adjust place and time, tune people identification, and use markup to add text, but you can’t classify your photos with words that suit you. I can’t understand why Apple would not have this fundamental feature in Photos to easily help people organize their images. It’s tempting to think of evil corporate strategies to make us consume more iCloud storage and keep us scrolling for more minutes on our iPhones. I can’t believe they didn’t think about it. It’s possible they may not wish to add features that could be confusing or misused. I can’t think of a technical reason.

Posted on Jul 13, 2025 08:51 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 13, 2025 09:14 AM in response to PJMixer

People here, users like yourself, can't explain why Apple does things. For your information, these options are available in Photos for Mac.

If you have suggestion for Apple, go here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Answer 2

Jul 14, 2025 07:05 AM in response to PJMixer

PJMixer wrote: … it would require setting the caption on each and every photo versus selecting multiple photos and applying a common caption (tag).

Again, these are things that are quite easy on a Mac. Let Apple know what you want here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Answer 3

xWauwau

Level 3

590 points

Jul 13, 2025 09:25 AM in response to PJMixer

please rethink: would it be an issue to:

organize your photos in albums
use the captions to classify your photos with words that suit you
use search to find photos that you have classified with words that suit you, or the general content, location, or timestamp of a photo

wouldn’t it be possible to utilize captions as tags?

utilize albums as a “tag overview”, if you will?

I mean, it’s not exactly the same, but it works, right? If you do professional photography you’re going to save your images in files (finder) anyways.

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Answer 4

xWauwau

Level 3

590 points

Jul 13, 2025 12:13 PM in response to PJMixer

That is correct. The only applicable solution here would be albums, yet those are not really a great option either. It is evident that Apple Photos is not really great for sorting images, in my opinion the last redesign made it mostly worse as the app is now slightly unorganized, but I bet Apple thinks it is not necessary to provide those options to the average customer. Although, looking at the last updates from Apple, I even think they could implement this feature, if enough people request it (or more, don’t, because who asked for liquid glass). So, if you’d like to, send feedback via the link provided by Richard Taylor. Maybe it’ll see success one day.

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

200,195 points

Jul 14, 2025 10:30 AM in response to PJMixer

The first version of Photos iOS had tags and a kind of smart albums. Apple removed these options in 2015, when it created a completely new version of Photos and discontinued the old version of Photos iOS and iPhoto on the iPad and iPhone, for whatever reasons. The new Photos.app has been very basic. We lost not only the keywords and smart albums, but also the web journals and slideshows. t took awhile, until we could at least add captions again and add locations and adjust the dates or retouch a photo on the iPhone or iPad.

If we keep sending feedback, we might get the keywords back, if enough users request this.

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Answer 6

PJMixer Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 13, 2025 11:31 AM in response to xWauwau

Thanks for your comment. It would work, but it would require setting the caption on each and every photo versus selecting multiple photos and applying a common caption (tag).

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