Apple Explains How the Photos People Recognition Feature Has Improved in iOS 15

Apple's iOS 15 website lists "improved recognition for individuals" as one of the new Photos features, and in a machine learning blog post shared this week, Apple gave more information on what exactly that means.

ios 15 improved people recognition
Apple says that on-device machine learning improvements have led to significantly better person recognition. The iOS 15 ‌Photos‌ app is able to detect people in extreme poses, people wearing accessories, and people with occluded faces.

To do this, Apple uses a combination of face and upper body to match people whose faces are not visible. Apple's machine learning blog says that the new functionality improves the ‌Photos‌ experience by identifying people in situations where it was previously impossible.

Apple's blog post on recognizing people in photos through on-device machine learning goes into much greater detail on how Apple uses machine learning to identify people while still protecting user privacy, and it's well worth a read for those who are interested in the inner workings of ML features.

Related Forum: iOS 15

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...
Mac Studio Feature

Apple Begins Selling Refurbished Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips at a Discount

Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by
Apple today added Mac Studio models with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips to its online certified refurbished store in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and many European countries, for the first time since they were released in March. As usual for refurbished Macs, prices are discounted by approximately 15% compared to the equivalent new models on Apple's online store. Note that Apple's ...
m4 macbook air pink

Apple Now Selling Refurbished M4 MacBook Air Models

Friday June 13, 2025 3:34 pm PDT by
Apple today added M4 MacBook Air models to its refurbished store in the United States, making the latest MacBook Air devices available at a discounted price for the first time since they launched earlier this year. Both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are available, with Apple offering multiple capacities and configurations. The refurbished devices are discounted by approximately 15...

Top Rated Comments

Kkspire Avatar
51 months ago
Y’all giving your photos to google. Good luck with that. iPhone is using incredible tech on device. Google is going to data centers for processing. No thanks.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jmh600cbr Avatar
51 months ago
can confirm, it works insanely well compared to prior versions. even knows what i looked like as a baby.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Think|Different Avatar
51 months ago
This feature has impressed me, time and time again! You just train it a bit by confirming a face or two and it does the rest. I've been shocked at how it has accurately matched my baby niece as she and her face has changed month to month, year after year, and now she's 3! The little movies with music iOS 15 makes are actually impressive, always dismissed those before.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
_Spinn_ Avatar
51 months ago
I love that they do all this locally on device.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
wigby Avatar
51 months ago

On device processing is meaningless to me. Google's offerings are server-side therefore doesn't need custom hardware, which is great for equity of access. There are billions of people around the world who can't afford the latest and greatest, at least someone is giving them new features.
You might speak for billions of users shopping for price but you don't speak for their need for privacy and security. Some things are more important than retail price, even to those that cannot afford it.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gaximus Avatar
51 months ago

Still farrrr behind Google
Does Google's Face recognition work on device? or does it get send to a server for processing?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)