Every Android device (apart from the stock Android phones) comes with a default gallery or photos manager. But, Google Photos is an app that is way more efficient than any of the photo managers on the market. The features that are served with it are very easy to access and cannot be found elsewhere. You won’t go back to using any other application to store and manage your photos once you start using Google Photos. There is one peculiar feature that can help in arranging the photos according to the person in it. Google Photos recognizes similar faces in the thousands of photos that you may have in the gallery and suggests you add these photos to a separate album.
This makes it easier to find the photos that you need easily. Want to find a photo with your friend to post for their birthday? No problem! Just head over to the album separated with facial recognition by Google Photos. But if Google Photos is not recognizing the faces in your gallery, here are some fixes you can try for it. Keep reading the article to know more!
Also read: Google Duo not working on PC: Fixes & Workarounds
Google Duo Network Error: Fixes & Workarounds
Steps to fix Google Photos not recognizing faces:
1) Clear app cache:
This is the fundamental step in troubleshooting an app. Tap and hold the Google Photos app on your phone and select ‘App info’. When you select app info, you will see the option to see the data distribution among different aspects of the app. From that distribution, select ‘Clear cache’ and delete all the cache files for Photos. When that’s done, open the app. The suggestion for a different album with everyone’s face recognized should be seen on the app. If Google Photos is not recognizing faces yet, try the next step.
2) Check if face recognition is enabled:
Many users may look over this issue but it is quite possible that face recognition for your Google Photos account may be disabled. Since it is so obvious, not everyone bothers looking into the matter. This goes mainly for the users who have recently switched to a new phone. Being habituated to the settings on the previous device can lead you to believe that your current device has it enabled. Hence, check the settings and if face recognition is not enabled, enable it. This should fix the issue.
3) Wait for some time:
If you have recently captured a lot of photos on your phone, Google Photos may need some time to arrange them. The first thing that is going to happen is, that Google Photos will try to upload the photos to the cloud. And after a few days, you will start receiving different suggestions, highlights, and edits for the photos you took. You can look at the highlights and animations or edits and download them if you want. This is when you should also see the separated album suggestions for different faces in Google Photos. This will indicate that the face recognition on Google Photos is working as it should.
4) Add all photos to a separate album:
In a few cases, adding all the photos to a different album, triggered Google Photos to recognize the different faces. Hence, tap on the ‘Library’ tab at the bottom right corner. Select ‘New Album’ and add all the photos from your camera roll to it. You can also add photos from other albums if you want as well. Restart Google Photos and tap the ‘Search’ option at the bottom of the screen. If Google Photos succeeded in recognizing the different faces in your gallery, they should be displayed here.
5) Restart the device:
When everything else fails to fix the Google Photos app on your phone, a restart is highly recommended. System errors are untraceable for the most part. Hence, the best way to tackle that is by restarting your device. But before performing the restart, disable face recognition on Google Photos. After you disable it, restart your device and re-enable face recognition. This will make Google Photos start recognizing the faces in your photo gallery for sure.