YOUR iPhone has a clever feature that’s perfect for anyone who has been through a break-up.
But it’s not just for love splits – it can be handy for loads of reasons.
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Have you ever noticed that when you go into your iPhone’s Photos app, you’ll get shown memories of times gone by?
It’s a handy feature to see what you were up to on certain dates, or during a holiday, or in a special place.
But you might find that an ex keeps popping up – and you’d rather they didn’t.
Well you can set your iPhone up to show that person less.
And if you’d rather, you can have them not appear at all in those memories.
It won’t delete the photos from your iPhone, but they’ll just be scrubbed from the collections that Apple creates for you.
Of course this feature isn’t just useful for break-ups.
Maybe there’s a friend you’ve fallen out with, and don’t want to see snaps of any more.
And some people might want to use the feature to avoid seeing photos of lost loved ones.
Many people want to hang on to photos of people who have passed away, but the pop-up reminders aren’t always ideal.
It’s also worth noting that this feature works for pets too.
So if you had a cat or dog that passed away and don’t want photos appearing from out of the blue, you can tweak the settings.
And remember: you can reset your memories settings at any time.
HOW TO FEATURE PERSON LESS ON IPHONE
The easiest way to do this is to just find a photo of the person on your iPhone.
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And a quick way to get there is to go to the People folder in Photos.
Tap on the photo, and then choose the settings option in the top-right.
Now press the red button that says Feature This Person Less.
You then get two options:
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Feature This Person Less: Individual photos and videos of this person will not be featured or included in Memories, but group photos including them may be shown.
Never Feature This Person: No photos of this person will be featured or included in Memories, including group photos.
Choose the one that fits your needs. If you change your mind, you can go back to that menu and reset the choice.
Just keep in mind that it’s not a perfect solution: your iPhone may sometimes miss people in a photo and show you them anyway.
BONUS OPTION! CLEAN UP…
For when you really want to make someone disappear…
If you love a photo but you think an ex is totally spoiling it, just delete them.
In iOS 18, Apple added a special AI feature called Clean Up.
This lets you delete specific objects – including people – from an image.
It’ll use some AI guesswork to replace the person with a sensible background, and it should look as if they were never there.
Just find the photo, tap on the edit button, and then choose Clean Up from the bottom row of options.
Then select the person that you want to delete and wipe them away, then save the newly cleansed image.
The only catch is that you need an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence to do this.
That includes:
- iPhone 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro Max
- iPhone 16e
If you have any other iPhone model, this trick won’t work.
Picture Credit: Apple
It’s also possible to turn off Memories and Featured Photos in the Photos app altogether.
Just go to Settings > Apps > Photos and then turn off Show Featured Content.
You can also mass-reset Memories by going to Settings > Apps > Photos and then hitting Reset Suggested Memories.
And another option is to hide photos of the person that you’re trying to avoid seeing.
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Just go into the People section of Photos to find all images of that person.
Then select all of the images, go into the options, and choose Hide.
Those images will all be dumped in the Hidden photo, and won’t appear in your regular photo feed.
You can follow the same steps to unhide an image at any time.
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