Your Mac Photos app is friendly and versatile, but when it comes to facial recognition, it doesn’t always recognize some of our best friends.
Photos already recognizes human faces and encourages you to identify them with names, so you can see many images that show your mug (or those of family and friends) with a double click. Clicking on any of the displayed faces in the People section of the app reveals that Photos automatically recognizes designated faces and offers much more to view immediately.
Unfortunately, it won’t do the same for my cat Ruby. But there’s a way to get Photos to show the faces of your beloved pets next to your human relationships, so you can easily compose photos where they’re included.
- Time to complete: 5 minutes
- Tools Needed: Photos on macOS
- Materials Needed: Photos of your pet’s face
Show face names
Foundry
Check in the app if you have done that View > Show Face Names enabled. Then go to a picture with your beloved Fido or Fluffy on it and click the Info button (the first icon in the top right of the Photos window). There you will see the recognized face (or faces if there is more than one) and another plus sign (+) in an empty circle.
Select your pet’s face
Foundry
Click the plus icon and it places another circle directly on top of the image, which you can drag to position and resize over your pet’s face. Be patient, as this positioning can take some skill.
Once you click the X on the side of the circle it disappears and your pet’s face is then recorded as a recognized face in the photo.
Pet face detected
Foundry
When you close and reopen the Photos app, your pet appears as a recognized face.
Unfortunately, the app won’t let you automatically attach additional photos of your pet because your pet isn’t human. But you can repeat the above process for other images of your pet by going back to the photo library to select and tag more images of the same animal. When you start typing the name, the app will give you a choice of names from the list it automatically generates, but add your pet’s name. This method ensures that you can locate your pet in the People section of the app and add your favorite photos there for super fast viewing.
