See iOS 10's New Photos App in Action

The Photos app in iOS 10 has been updated with what Apple calls "Siri intelligence," which essentially equates to new deep learning techniques and advanced facial and object recognition algorithms.

Using these tools, Photos is able to scan a user's entire photo library, intelligently detecting people, animals, places, and objects and grouping photos together in a logical way based on those parameters. As can be seen in the video below, this enables powerful searching capabilities, allowing users to search for "cats" to bring up their images of cats, or "mountains" to find all images taken of mountains.


New to Photos on iOS is a "People" album, housing all of a user's images featuring people, grouped based on facial recognition, and there's a world map that shows the physical location where each of a user's photos were taken.

Perhaps the best new feature in Photos is a "Memories" tab that uses all of the image recognition, date, and location information to aggregate photos based around certain days, vacation trips, family events, and more, so your photos can be revisited on a regular basis. With Memories, there are options to watch quick video montages of photos, which are set to music.

Also new in the iOS 10 Photos app are Live Filters that work with Live Photos and new Markup tools for annotating photos.

The new features in Photos are powered by a device's GPU with all learning done on a device-by-device basis to ensure full privacy. Apple has made it clear that it does not see images or image metadata. When using the new Photos features, each device with a photo library will need to scan images independently -- there is no iCloud link yet.

In case you missed them, make sure to check out our seven minute WWDC 2016 video, which features a quick rundown on all of the new iOS, macOS Sierra, tvOS, and watchOS features Apple introduced this week, and our video highlighting iOS 10's overhauled Lock screen. stay tuned to MacRumors for more in-depth software videos.

Related Forum: iOS 10

Popular Stories

iOS 26

iOS 26.2 Coming Soon With These 8 New Features on Your iPhone

Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon. Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week. iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Google maps feaure

Google Maps Quietly Added This Long-Overdue Feature for Drivers

Wednesday December 10, 2025 2:52 am PST by
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you. Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
AirPods Pro Firmware Feature

Apple Releases New Firmware for AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3

Thursday December 11, 2025 11:28 am PST by
Apple today released new firmware designed for the AirPods Pro 3 and the prior-generation AirPods Pro 2. The AirPods Pro 3 firmware is 8B30, up from 8B25, while the AirPods Pro 2 firmware is 8B28, up from 8B21. There's no word on what's include in the updated firmware, but the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 are getting expanded support for Live Translation in the European Union in iOS...
iOS 26

iOS 26.4 and iOS 27 Features Revealed in New Leak

Friday December 12, 2025 10:56 am PST by
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28. The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature 1

Apple to Make More Foldable iPhones Than Expected [Updated]

Tuesday December 9, 2025 9:59 am PST by
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports. In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
AirTag 2 Mock Feature

Apple AirTag 2: Four New Features Found in iOS 26 Code

Thursday December 11, 2025 10:31 am PST by
The AirTag 2 will include a handful of new features that will improve tracking capabilities, according to a new report from Macworld. The site says that it was able to access an internal build of iOS 26, which includes references to multiple unreleased products. Here's what's supposedly coming: An improved pairing process, though no details were provided. AirTag pairing is already...
iOS 26

Apple Releases iOS 26.2 With Alarms for Reminders, Lock Screen Changes, Enhanced Safety Alerts and More

Friday December 12, 2025 10:10 am PST by
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. ‌iOS 26‌.2 is compatible with the ‌iPhone‌ 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation ‌iPhone‌ SE. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings >...
iOS 26

15 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.2

Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below. Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
maxresdefault

iOS 26 Code Leak Reveals Apple Smart Home Hub Details

Thursday December 11, 2025 4:02 pm PST by
Apple is working on a smart home hub that will rely heavily on the more capable version of Siri that's coming next year. We've heard quite a bit about the hub over the last two years, but a recent iOS 26 code leak provides additional insight into what we can expect and confirms rumored features. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Macworld claims to have access to an ...

Top Rated Comments

vmistery Avatar
124 months ago
Photos of cats: 3837162689292 matches found
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RDeckard Avatar
124 months ago
hopefully you can disable that feature. seems like a huge privacy breach.
I don't think you know what a privacy breach is.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Klae17 Avatar
124 months ago
I tried it with the "Best of 3 months" setting. Played my trip to PHX, my puppies, family pics, nudes, screenshots of conversations on Tinder, and some food and memes. Not exactly what I was expecting for my friends to see lol.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Gudi Avatar
124 months ago
All I want the photos app to do is play my gifs.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
melsea Avatar
124 months ago
Looks good, but how will this interact with the faces tags which I have done on my mac in Photos? Will the assembled albums also sync and appear on the mac?
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kirky29 Avatar
124 months ago
It's the simple things that Photos lacks for me.... like being able to rotate an image without having to edit > press the cropping tool > rotate > save.

Also it would be a nice addition if Screen Rotation would disable itself when you've got an image or video open.

I'd like to be able to find out file sizes too... and sort by date (Ascending/Descending), File size, etc.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)