Search your photos for anything. For example, you can search for:
- A wedding that you attended last summer
- Your best friend
- A pet
- Your favourite city
You can also use Search to find different features and collections in Google Photos, like 'People and pets', 'Albums', 'Documents' and more.
Important: Some features aren't available in all geographic regions, all domains or all account types.
Before you get started
Download and install the Google Photos app.
Search your photos
Important: To easily search and manage your photos, you can apply a label to people or pets that appear in photos grouped by Google Photos. Learn how to set up Face Groups.
You can use Search to find combinations of people and pets, locations, things, dates and more using descriptive free text:
- On your Android device, open the Google Photos app .
- At the bottom, tap Search.
- Tap the search box.
- Enter what you want to find.
- You can use phrases like 'Alice and me laughing', 'colourful sunsets in Mexico', 'Emma at the playground' and 'drinking tea by the beach'.
- You can only search with a name or nickname if you've labelled people or pets.
Tip: Natural language queries work best in English.
You can also search with your recent searches or with suggestions from the Search tab:
- On your Android device, open the Google Photos app .
- At the bottom, tap Search.
- To search with recent searches: Under Recent, select a recent search, if you have any.
- To search with suggestions: Under Suggestions, select a search suggestion.
Manage your search results
You can sort your search results by 'Most recent' or 'Best match'.
On the search results page, at the top, tap Most recent or Best match:
- Most recent: Your search results are sorted by date.
- Best match: Your search results are sorted by relevance.
Tip: For each search, the default sort view varies. Both sort views aren't available for all searches.
Search for your collections and other features
From the Collections view, you can find 'People and pets', 'Albums', 'Documents' and 'Places'. You can also find other content organised in:
- Archive
- Favourites
- Locked Folder
- Partner Sharing
- Recently added
- Screenshots
- Bin
- Videos
You can also search for these items:
- On your Android device, open the Google Photos app .
- At the bottom, tap Search.
- Enter the name of the item that you want to find.
- You can use words like 'Abigail', 'Documents', 'Favourites' and more.
- When it appears in the search suggestions, tap the item's name.