The Photos app for Mac, included with every Mac, is the best place to keep all your precious digital pictures and videos. Whether you take them on your iPhone or iPad – or import from a camera, iPhoto or Aperture – Photos safely stores the pictures in its library. No more hunting through folders!
Photos automatically and intelligently groups photos based on time and place using GPS and face detection so you can quickly find the photos you need. Go ahead and crop, add filters, adjust color and effects. It’s easy and non-destructive, meaning you can go back later and undo your changes. Make slideshows, order prints, books and more. You can share your photos by email, message, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Or drag photos out to the desktop and edit them in Photoshop or Pixelmator – your original is safe in your Photos library.
Turn on iCloud Photo Library and Photos does even more. Now snap a picture or video on the iPhone or add it to the Photos app and it’s automatically copied to Apple’s secure cloud. When you edit and organize photos into albums on your computer, you’ll find the latest versions in the same albums on the iPhone & iPad. Got tens of thousands of photos? No problem. Your Mac, iPhone & iPad can optimize storage and automatically download and show your photos on demand whenever you want. So you can keep shooting without running out of space. Even if you lost your phone and computer, your entire library is safe in the cloud. You can access pictures from any web browser or download all the photos & videos to a replacement Mac.
There’s nothing like the Photos app for OS X. It’s one of the best reasons to own a Mac, and it’s built right in. If your Mac doesn’t have the Photos app, you may need to install the free upgrade to the latest macOS. Click for upgrade instructions.
Photos for help
- Complete guide to setting up and using Photos from the iMore site
- Setting up Photos for macOS
- Importing from iPhoto
- Using Moments, Collections & Years
- Seeing a map of where photos were taken
- Identifying people by Faces
- Organizing photos & videos in albums
- Searching for photos & videos
- Deleting and recovering photos
- Cropping & straightening photos
- Adding filters to photos
- Adjusting light & color
- Sharing pictures with email, Facebook & more
- Sharing photos with Family Sharing
- Getting started with iCloud Photo Library
- Setting up iCloud Photo Library
- Using Photos Extensions to add more features
