How to create Smart Albums in Photos on your Mac

New Smart Album in Photos Mac

Your Mac offers several “Smart” tools like Smart Folders in Finder and Smart Groups in Contacts. So why not Smart Albums in Photos? This cool way of assembling photos into albums takes the burden off of you to do it manually because photos that match your criteria will pop into the album automatically.

If you like to keep your images, screenshots, and photos organized, but don’t like to spend a lot of time doing it, then here’s how to create Smart Albums in Photos on Mac.

Create a Smart Album in Photos

Open the Photos app on your Mac and follow these steps to create your first Smart Album.

1) Click File > New Smart Album from the menu bar.

2) Enter a Smart Album Name.

3) Select a type in the first drop-down box in the condition section. You can pick from several options like Photo, Date Captured, Title, Description, and more.

4) The boxes to the right will change depending on what you pick in the first drop-down box. For example, if you choose Photo, you will select is or is not, and then in the last drop-down pick from favorite, portrait, screenshot, selfie, or another kind of photo.

5) On the bottom left of the window, you’ll see the number of matching photos you have for that criteria. If you’re done, click OK but if you’d like to add another condition, continue with the next step.

Create Smart Album in Photos Mac

6) To narrow down the photos for the album, you can add another condition. Click the plus sign button to the right of the first one.

7) Follow the same steps to choose the second criteria set.

8) Now you’ll have an option to pick all or any above the conditions. So decide if you want all conditions to apply or any of them.

9) You can continue adding conditions to get very specific with the photos you want in your Smart Album. When you finish, click OK.

Add Condition Smart Album in Photos Mac

Your new Smart Album will appear in the Photos sidebar under My Albums.

Edit your Smart Album

You can make changes to a Smart Album after you create it just like you can an ordinary album. Right-click it in the sidebar and you’ll see options to rename or delete it. You can also edit it if you want to adjust the conditions, like remove one or add more.

Edit Smart Album in Photos Mac

Wrapping it up

Smart Albums in Photos are handy for automatically gathering photos of a vacation, screenshots for work, or videos of your pet. Are you going to set up a Smart Album? Let us know!

And for more help with Photos, check how to create and manage shared albums or remove metadata from Photos on your Mac.