Search by people, things and places in your photos

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.
• To search your photos using Gemini in Ask Photos, you'll first need to opt in to Gemini features in Photos. Learn how to start using Ask Photos.

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:

1. On your Android device, open the Google Photos app .
2. At the bottom, tap Search.
3. Tap the search box.
4. 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 fireplace'.
     • You can only search with a name or nickname if you've labelled people or pets. Learn how to set up Face Groups.
     • To search for yourself using 'me', make sure that you set your face as 'me' in the 'people or pets' section of the app. Learn how to label your face group.
   • You can use quotation marks if you want to find exact text matches in filenames, camera models, captions or text within photos. If you don't use quotation marks, you'll get a wider range of results not limited to text.
5. Depending on the query and the photos in your library, the results page may include two sections:
   • The most relevant results are labelled as 'Best match'. To view all of the photos in this section, tap the last photo in the preview with the plus sign.
   • The results below 'Best match' are shown in reverse chronological order.

Tip: Natural language queries work best in English.

On the Search tab, you can find suggestions to help you:

• Navigate to pages of people and pets
• Reissue recent searches
• Navigate to other pages in the app

1. On your Android device, open the Google Photos app .
2. At the bottom, tap Search.
3. Find the faces shortcuts.
   • To go to the page of one of your top people or pets: Tap on their face.
   • To find pages of other people and pets: Tap More .

• You can find recent searches and other suggestions below the faces shortcuts.

Tips:

• You can only see faces shortcuts when the Face Groups feature is on. Learn how to turn Face Groups on.
• You can also ask Google Photos for photos, information, and assistance with a conversational agent. Learn more about Ask Photos.

Search for a photo or video

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:

1. On your Android device, open the Google Photos app .
2. At the bottom, tap Search.
3. Enter the name of the item that you want to find.
   • You can use words like 'Abigail', 'Documents', 'Favourites' and more.
4. When it appears in the search suggestions, tap the item's name.

Related resources

Can't find your photos? Get help finding photos.