How to Create and Manage Smart Albums in Photos

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create and manage smart albums in the Photos app. Smart albums are a powerful feature that allows you to automatically organize your photos based on specific criteria. Whether you want to create an album of your favorite photos, sort images by location, or group pictures by date, smart albums make it easy to keep your photo library organized. Let's get started!

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you will need:

A device (computer, smartphone, or tablet) running Photos app.
A collection of photos in your photo library.

Creating a Smart Album

Launch the Photos app on your device and open your Photo library.
Click on the "Albums" tab in the navigation menu to view all your existing albums.
Scroll to the bottom and click on the "+", then select "New Smart Album" from the dropdown menu.
A new window will appear with various options to customize your smart album.

Basic criteria

Match the following condition: Specify the criteria for the smart album. For example, you can choose to match all photos that contain a specific keyword, a certain date range, or a combination of conditions.

Advanced criteria

Add more conditions: If you want to refine the criteria further, you can add multiple conditions to the smart album. Simply click on the "+" button and choose the desired condition from the dropdown menu.

Live updating

Live updating: Enable this option if you want the smart album to automatically update itself when new photos matching the criteria are added to your library.

Once you have set the criteria for your smart album, click on the "OK" button to create it. The smart album will now appear in your albums list.

Managing Smart Albums

After creating smart albums, you may want to perform certain management actions on them, such as renaming, reordering, or deleting. Here's how you can manage your smart albums:

Renaming a Smart Album

Open the Photos app and navigate to the "Albums" tab.
Find the smart album you want to rename and right-click on it (or tap and hold on mobile devices).
Select "Rename" from the context menu, and then enter the new name for the smart album.

Reordering Smart Albums

In the "Albums" tab, find the smart album you want to reorder.
Click and hold on the smart album's name, and then drag it to the desired position in the album list. Release your mouse button to drop it into place.

Deleting a Smart Album

Open the "Albums" tab in the Photos app.
Locate the smart album you want to delete.
Right-click on the smart album (or tap and hold on mobile devices) to open the context menu.
Choose "Delete Album" from the menu, then confirm the deletion when prompted.

Remember, deleting a smart album will not delete the actual photos within it; it only removes the album itself.

Conclusion

With smart albums in the Photos app, you can effortlessly organize and manage your photo library based on specific criteria. By creating smart albums, you save time and effort by automating the organization process. You can easily customize the conditions for each album, set them to update automatically, and perform management actions like renaming, reordering, and deleting. Enjoy having a well-organized photo collection with the help of smart albums!