How to give 1 to 5 stars to your photos on iPhone, iPad, Mac

Learn how to enable star ratings in the Photos app on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate, so you can rate your photos and videos from 1 to 5 stars (★★★★★) for better organization and easier searching.

When you need to find an image or video in your photo library quickly, you can use the search bar to type what you’re looking for. For instance, typing ‘food’ should show all food and food-related pictures. If you have set up Apple Intelligence, you can even search using longer descriptions, such as ‘Sebastien wearing a red shirt on the beach,’ to find pictures that match this description.

Another option for quickly finding something is to use sorting and filtering, as shown in the screenshot below.

iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 add a new star rating feature, similar to the one in the Music app. It lets you rate your photos on a scale of 1 to 5 stars (★★★★★). And then you can filter all photos by these star ratings to quickly find what you’re looking for.

For example, I have decided to mark the best family photos with 5 stars, so I can view them all quickly. Similarly, I will mark all screenshots that I want to keep for a while with 1 star (so I don’t select them when cleaning my library). You can obviously see what rating scale works best for you.

Enable star ratings in the Apple Photos app

This feature is not switched on by default, so you need to do that first.

iPhone or iPad

1. Update your iPhone or iPad to iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 (currently they are in beta).
2. Open the Photos app and go to the Collections tab.
3. Tap your Apple Account profile photo in the top right corner, as shown in the screenshot below.
4. Turn on Show Ratings Controls and close this screen.

Mac

1. Update your Mac desktop or MacBook to macOS 27 Golden Gate. You can also install macOS 27 on a second partition of the same computer.
2. Open the Photos app and click Photos > Settings from the top menu bar. Or, press the Command + , (comma) keys.
3. Check Show Rating Controls and close the settings pane.

Rate photos and videos 1 to 5 stars in the Apple Photos app

After enabling ratings controls, you can start assigning stars to your media.

iPhone or iPad

1. Open the Photos app and tap to view a picture or video in your library or album (but don’t select one from a shared iCloud album).
2. Tap the little star icon (★) at the top and set the rating to 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 stars.

Mac

Open the Photos app, view a photo or video, and click the star icon (★) to select from 1 to 5 stars.

You can also Control-click on a photo and select between one and five stars.

Or, select a photo and click Image from the top menu bar to set a star rating (★★★★★).

Filter photos by star rating

Once you have rated some photos and videos, you can use the filter option to see those – and just those – photos and videos.

iPhone or iPad

1. Open the iOS 27 Photos app and make sure you’re in the Library tab. Going to an album, category, and the like works too.
2. Tap the three-line filter menu icon at the top and select Rating.
3. Select one or more ratings (★★★★★) to view all photos and videos that are marked that way.
4. To view all photos without a ratings filter, follow the above steps and unselect all star ratings. Or, tap the three-line menu icon and select All Items or Remove Filters.

Mac

Go to the Photos app, click the three-line filter menu icon, and select one or more star ratings.

You can also click View in the top menu bar and select Filter By > Show Rating.

Show star ratings in your photo library

Once you assign star ratings to your photos, Mac displays them as a tiny label in the left corner of each photo, as shown in the screenshot below.

And you have the option to enable the same for your photo library on iPhone and iPad by following these steps:

1. Open the iOS 27 Photos app and make sure you are in the Library tab.
2. Tap the three-line filter menu icon.
3. Tap View Options and tap to enable Star Rating. You should now see your star labels for such photos in your library. This is similar to how a little heart icon is shown for photos you have marked as favorites.

What do you think of this feature? Will you be using it? I sure will.

Also, new in iOS 27:

• How to create temporary shared iCloud album in iOS 27
• How to save a video frame as photo on iPhone, iPad, Mac