10-people
People and face recognition
Iris detects faces in your photos using on‑device machine learning — nothing about your photos leaves your Mac or is sent to any third party. You teach Iris who's who by naming the faces it finds. Over time, the People section of the sidebar becomes a living index of everyone who appears in your library.
How face recognition works
Iris runs face detection during the background pipeline:
- For each photo, it finds every face.
- For each detected face, it generates a numerical "fingerprint" of the face.
- When you create a new Person and assign faces to them, Iris suggests other faces with similar fingerprints for that Person.
Iris is conservative — it would rather show a face as "unknown" than assign it incorrectly. Your confirmations make it more confident over time.
Face recognition can be turned off entirely in Settings → Library if you'd rather not use it.
Creating a person
- Choose File → New Person…, or right‑click anywhere in the People section of the sidebar and choose New Person.
- Enter the person's name and an optional birthdate.
A birthdate is optional, but if you provide one, you unlock two extra views in the sidebar: By Age (photos grouped by the person's age at capture) and Birthday (photos taken on this person's birthday across all years).
The person now appears in the sidebar under People. Initially they have zero photos — once you've manually assigned five faces to a person, Iris will begin suggested auto-assigning similar faces.
Naming an unknown face
- Select a photo in the grid or list.
- Open the Inspector → People tab (
⌘⌥3). - In the Unknown Faces section, right‑click a face thumbnail.
- Choose Assign to Person… and pick the right person from the list.
As soon as you assign, the face moves from Unknown Faces to Named People, and Iris uses your confirmation to improve future matching.
Rejecting a false detection
Sometimes Iris detects something that isn't actually a face — a doll, a reflection, a face on a poster. Right‑click the face thumbnail in the People tab and choose Reject. That face will no longer be shown as unknown in this photo, and Iris will down‑weight similar detections in the future.
Browsing by person
Click a person's name in the sidebar to see every photo and video containing them.
Expand the person's sidebar node for two extra views:
| Sub‑node | Contents |
|---|---|
| By Age | Items grouped by the person's approximate age at the time of capture (requires a birthdate) |
| Birthday | All photos taken on the person's birthday across all years |
If you toggle Birthdays Must Include Person in Settings, the Birthday view will only show photos where this person is one of the recognized faces (not just any photo taken on that calendar date).
Editing a person
Right‑click a person in the sidebar to:
- Edit Person… — Change name, birthdate, or notes.
- Delete — Remove the person record. Their photos remain in your library; they just become unknown faces again.
How long until Iris recognizes a new person?
The first time you assign a face to a new person, Iris starts learning, but won't auto-assign until you've manually assigned at least five faces. After 5–10 confirmations, recognition becomes noticeably better; after 30 or so, it's usually quite reliable on photos taken in similar conditions to the ones you've confirmed.
Face matching is probabilistic, so you'll always see some unknown faces — especially in photos with unusual angles, lighting, or occlusion. The People tab on each photo is where you keep teaching Iris.
Privacy
All face detection, embedding, and matching happens on your Mac, using on-device machine learning. Nothing about faces, names, or photo content is ever sent over the network by Iris.