Imagine someone mentions your granddaughter, and before they finish the sentence you're holding up a photo from her fifth birthday. Your phone can already do this. It just never told you.

Search by word

iPhones and Android phones both look through your photos and quietly label what's in them: beaches, birthday cakes, dogs, street signs. You can search those labels.

On an iPhone: open Photos, tap the magnifying glass, and type a word. Try "beach," "birthday cake," "dog," or "Berkeley."
On Android: open Google Photos, tap Search, and type the same kinds of words.

Try it now with one word. Photos from fifteen years ago turn up like they were waiting for you.

Name the faces once

This is the step that pays off most. Your phone already groups photos by face. You just tell it who each face is.

iPhone: in Photos, find People & Pets (scroll down, or look under Collections). Tap a face and add a name.
Google Photos: tap Collections, then People & pets. Tap a face and add a name.

Spend ten minutes naming the six or eight people you photograph most. After that, typing "Maya" brings up every photo of Maya, from last week back to the day she was born. You can combine words too: "Maya birthday" or "Maya beach."

What if the photos aren't on your phone?

This is where most of the people we work with get stuck. The photos are spread across an old phone in a drawer, a laptop that won't start, a stack of memory cards, and two different online accounts. Search can't find what never made it into your library.

Gathering it all into one organized, backed-up place is part of our everyday tech help. We once moved 14,000 photos off a client's old phone and organized every one, and now she can find any picture in seconds. Your photos are usually all still there, just scattered. We back everything up first, then bring it together in one place you can search.