2/19/25
9:00 am

Find Photos Not In Albums

If you need to find all of the photos in your Mac Photos Library that have not yet been assigned to an album, you can't do it with a search, but you can do it with a Smart Album.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to find photos in the Mac Photos App that are not yet assigned to an album. 
So a question I often get is from people that like to put all their photos into different albums in the Photos App. Now it is useful when doing that to be able to see which photos are not yet assigned to any album. It doesn't appear that there is a way to do that. There is no menu item that will get you there and you can't search for photos not in an album. But there is a method to do it and it pretty simple once you know the trick. 
What you want to do is go to File and create a Smart Album. A Smart Album is an album that instead of you individually putting photos in there it's the result of a Search. So, for instance, you can create a Smart Album for all the photos taken with a particular camera or all the photos taken on a certain date at a certain location. You can combine all of these different types of criteria and create a Smart Album. The great thing about a Smart Album is that they automatically update. So if you create a Smart Album that is photos from the last 30 days it's always going to show photos from the last 30 days. It will be a completely different set of photos in thirty days than what you see right now.  
So what you get to creating a Smart album here is not readily apparent how to do it. It doesn't seem like you can say, photo is not in an album. That's not there. What you want to do is go to Album. You want to say Album and then the default is, Is Any. So it's in any album. You can also select a specific album. I've got three albums in this demo library here so I can say, Album is Hawaii. But I can also say Is Any and change Is to Is Not. So now Album Is Not Any and the result will be all photos that are not in any album. I should name this something appropriate. I'll just call it Not In Any Album, like that and click Okay.    
Now you can see under Albums here on the left I've got this Smart Album called Not In Any Album. When I go to it I'll see photos that are not in an album. Now if I were to select one of these photos, like let's take this first one here, and drag and drop it into an album it will disappear from the Smart Album because it no longer fits the condition for the Smart Album, which is not in any album. It is in an album now so that photo is no longer going to be listed. I can use this Not In Any Album here to go through my photos and drag and drop them to albums until I run out of photos. Once this is empty every photos has been assigned to an album. 
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Now you can change the Smart Album any time you want by Control clicking, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, on the Smart Album here and choose Edit Smart Album. It takes you back to the list of Conditions. We can add Conditions. Let's click the plus button here and you can see it adds a second Condition.  That second Condition is Dated Added is in the Last 30 Days. We can change it, to what I think is more useful, Date Captured Is in the Last 30 Days. Check up here very carefully it says Match All Of the Following Conditions. So both of these conditions have to be met. So now you have a way to just see recent photos that have not yet been assigned to an album. Which is very useful if you don't plan on adding every single photo to an album, so you just want to see the photos you most recently took and have the chance to assign those to albums and once they are 30 days old you're not going to worry about them.
You can also change this to a specific date. So, for instance, you can say Is After and then give it a date, like say January 1st and let's do 2021. Anything before this date you're not going to worry about putting everything into albums. But you want to be very organized after this date and you want them all in albums and this is a quick way to see which ones you haven't put in an album yet. 
You can even add more here. For instance you can go to Photo and you can say Is Not and then let's say Video. So it eliminates the videos from there so you don't care about putting those in albums. Or alternatively you can say Is A Video and just see which videos you have not put in an album. Remember it is very easy to update this. So you can use it like this and then just go back to Edit Smart Album and then make a change and Okay. Then see a different set of photos there. So you don't need to create tons of different Smart Albums for different types of conditions. You can just have this one here as a handy organizing tool and continue to go in and Edit it and change what the Conditions are. It's easy to remove these from it and then add new ones. 
Another useful thing about what you might want to do is if you're in the habit of tagging some photos, opening other photos in albums, you might want to see all the photos that are not in an album and are also not tagged. So in that case you can go to Keyword and then you can say, Is Not, and then there is Also Any There. So this Smart Album will show me everything in an album and it is not tagged. 
Another thing to keep in mind a lot of people don't realize. You can Search by Location. So the idea here is that if you select a photo, like this, and you get Info on it and then if you look at the Location here you can see a lot of text. You can actually access this location using the Text Portion of a Smart Album. So I'm going to Edit the Smart Album here and I'm going to say, I want it to be anything not in an album and the text is (that really means contained) and I can do something like this. Then I'll get everything that has that word in any kind of text field including the location. 
So let's say you've gone through these and you've determined that you put everything into regular albums that you want to put in albums. The rest of these you don't want to get rid of but you don't need them to be in an album. So how to get them out of this list. Well on thing you can do is create a New Album and maybe call this Uncategorized or No Album. Now when you move things to this album, I'll select like all of these photos right here, I can move them into No Album. Since they are now actually in an album they won't be listed in my Smart Album. Another thing you can do is select them and then use the Keyword Manager to add a Keyword and then set your Smart Album to Not Be In Any Album and also Not Have a Certain Keyword, like no album or something like that. So lots of different ways where you can use a simple Smart Album, like this, and make sure some of the photos don't show up there. 
But if you ever want to see all the photos that are not in any album but also ones that are in this special No Album album you created, you can change it to be like this. Album Is Not Any and also Album Is and then choose that special album you created. Change Match All to Match any and now you'll get things that are not in any album or are in this special album. 
Another thing to note is you can use Smart Albums to help you get things into albums. Like when I showed before you can use Album Is Not Any and you can also then say Text Is and then have a location, like that, and then you'll see all of these photos here. You can grab them all, a quick Command A will do that, then drag them into an album and now it is empty there. Now you can go back and edit the Smart album again, change this Text to something else or some other criteria, and use that for Drag and Drop. So not only can you use this to take photos one-by-one and put them in albums but you can use more specific criteria here to grab groups of photos and put them into albums. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 24 Responses to “Find Photos Not In Albums”

Eugenia

1 month ago

WOW! I've never tried to use Smart Album but I also can get behind in assigning images to albums. I do use keywords but still find albums the easiest for me. Thanks.

Jack

1 month ago

Gary, in the video you show how to search the location by the text that is entered. Much like your smart album of no album so you can assign them, how can I create a smart album with no location? I used to be able to do this by searching location "untitled".
Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Jack: Photo, Is Not, Tagged With GPS

Jack

1 month ago

Gary, that worked perfectly! Thank you

Jim Terrinoni

1 month ago

Interesting solutions to some vexing problems, thank you!

Art Busbey

1 month ago

This is a little off topic, but how can I use Smart Albums to find pictures where Photos has identified a face but I haven't give a name to the face yet? Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Art: You can't use Smart Albums for that. But you don't need to. Click on People & Pets in the left sidebar. Then for people you already have there, go into each one and scroll to the bottom. Select Review More Photos. For people not yet there, go back to the top level of People & Pets, and click the Add People button at the bottom of that.

Mike Russell

1 month ago

This is the closest work around to the “issue” of photos remaining in your Library even after being moved into a Folder or Album. Does anyone else wish Apple would allow this? A neat, empty library with all photos sorted? Like a clean email inbox?

Art Busbey

1 month ago

Gary, thanks for the comment. I didn't realize that the Add People button would show you all the people that Photos could not recognize.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Mike: That's not how it works though. Every photo is in your library. If it wasn't in your library, then it wouldn't be there at all. Think of it like "Songs" in the iTunes/Music app. Every song is there.
But you can create albums, which are like playlists. The photos aren't IN the album, they are all in your library. But they can be referenced in an album the same way songs are referenced in playlist.
I did a video on this: https://macmost.com/understanding-how-your-photos-are-stored-in-your-mac-photos-app.html

Shirley Putschoegl

1 month ago

Does this work for videos also? I make videos of trips and etc.

Clinton Hayes

1 month ago

Hi Gary,

Thanks for that. Never used Smart Albums before but can see the myriad of ways I may be able to utilise them. I had photos stored on the PC and then in iCloud; in the old photos app and then the newer one and somehow (probably my fault), I now seem to have lost some photos.
However, strangely as I didn't think I used it much, Google Photos seems to have my entire collection. Maybe importing all and then using Smart Albums might resolve my issue?

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Clinton: Sounds like you installed Google Photos and gave it permission to grab all of your images. I'd look into that and get it sorted. I don't see how Smart Albums will help with that in any way.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Shirley: Yes. Try it and see.

1 month ago

...what is a method to create a 'title' or 'keyword' for images the were just added to Photos in order to create smart album searches more accurately?? btw–great videos!

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

pw: Not sure what you mean. What are you looking to create, exactly?

Carolyn Johnson

1 month ago

Thank you! I've spent two extremely cold snowed in winter days sorting photos into albums, and creating some new albums. This is extremely helpful and not difficult to do!! You are my 'go to' when I have a Mac question. In this, you solved an issue I didn't know I had!!

Pat

1 month ago

'Any' is not an option on my MacBook. iOS 15.3.1

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Pat: Are you sure you have the first two selected correctly: Album first, then Is Not second?

Eric

1 month ago

To tie into Photos and organization—under People & Pets, aside from the “Find More” option within each identified person, is there a way to manually trigger a full review of the existing photo library? It seems that updates happen sporadically, often remain incomplete, and require selecting individuals for re-checking. It would be helpful to have an option to force a comprehensive re-scan periodically. Would it be possible to achieve this using an Automator script?

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

Eric: There's no way to force a re-scan and you shouldn't need to. In addition to "Find More" you can go to the bottom of the main list of people and there is an "Add People" button that may be what you are looking for. You can also go to any individual photo you want and add people with Window, Info and there is an Add Faces button. Once you use this, it should trigger a rescan in the background looking for more instances of that person.

Sheldon

1 month ago

Thanks bunches

1 month ago

Gary, what I look to create is a way to get a 'keyword' or 'title' or 'caption' or 'location' pre-set before I use the iphone in order to take a bunch of photos (NOT at the same time, event or location) that are, by default then, keyworded or titled reducing the need/time to sit at the computer and make an album and drag random but related photos due the fact that a simple search will find the title or keyword in the Photos menu item 'window'->Info.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 month ago

pw: So you want to tell your iPhone that all photos taken from now until you change something will be tagged "A" or something? But what is the difference if you just select those photos after you take them and do it? They would all be together since they were taken at the same time. Easy to select and organize.