How to manually tag people and faces in Google Photos

One of the best parts about Google Photos is the automatic face tagging feature, which makes it easy to quickly find photos of your friends without having to scroll aimlessly through years of backups. Up until recently, though, you could only label faces Google Photos had already detected. Now, you can add those face tags yourself, with a few caveats.

How to manually tag faces

Tagging faces is a great way to easily index your photos, but before, you needed to let Google do all of the work, with the only manual option being confirming automatic tags. Now, you can do the tagging yourself in just a few simple steps.

1. From your Google Photos gallery, tap a photo with the face or faces you want to tag.
2. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner, or just swipe up to access additional options.
3. Under People, you'll either see faces Google has already identified, or simply see "x faces available to add." Tap the pencil icon to edit these labels.
4. Under Available to Add, tap a face you'd like to manually tag. You can also tap the minus (-) icon on incorrect face tags to remove the label so you can fix it yourself.
5. Tap a face you've previously identified in the People & Pets grid, or tap the plus (+) button in the upper right corner to create a new person label.

There are still a few limitations with tagging people. You can't tag a photo if Google hasn't already found any faces, and you'll still need to jump into the People & Pets album later to name new faces. Still, this is a quicker way to tag photos than before, when you needed to wait for faces to pop up in the People & Pets album automatically. Take an afternoon to tag any of your important photos and take back your photo gallery!

Phone used in this guide

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

For The Brave

Honor the best Honor phones available right now

Huawei's ongoing trade ban has affected its Honor sub-brand as well, with the manufacturer launching fewer devices than usual last year. That said, we got to see a few standout phones in the likes of the Honor 20

Plenty to love

These are the best Xiaomi phones you can buy in 2020

Xiaomi has carved out a niche for itself over the last five years for offering phones that redefine value for money. From $100 entry-level phones to true flagships with innovative features, these are the best Xiaomi phones you can buy in 2020.

Snap that

The Google Pixel 4 is the best phone for taking photos, period

If you want the best Android camera, you should go with the Google Pixel 4. There are many great options that get close, though.