How to stop unwanted photos from showing up in Memories and Featured Photos on iPhone

The Photos app builds Memories and Featured Photos from your library automatically: by date, place, trip and the people it recognises. It then shows them in the For You tab, in Search, in notifications and in the Photos widget on the Home Screen or Lock Screen. A photo you forgot about, or a person you would rather not see, can come up without you asking for it.

The reliable fixes are to tell Photos to feature that person less, to remove or hide single photos, or to turn the suggestions off. Which one fits depends on what you want to avoid.

1. 1Open a photo of the person in the Photos app.
2. 2Tap the More (…) button, or the info (i) button on some iOS versions. If more than one person is in the photo, tap the one you mean first.
3. 3Choose Feature This Person Less or Never Feature This Person.

Feature This Person Less keeps them out of most Memories, though they may still turn up in group photos. Never Feature This Person is stricter and also leaves out group photos that include them.

The option only appears for faces that Photos has recognised and named or grouped, and the exact wording and location of the menu change between iOS versions. You can also open the People & Pets album, open the person and use the same menu there. Apple's own page on Memories for your iOS version is the place to confirm the current names.

1. 1Open Photos and go to For You, then Featured Photos. Tap the arrow to see them all.
2. 2Press and hold the photo you do not want.
3. 3Choose Remove from Featured Photos.

If you use the Photos widget, you can also long-press it, tap Edit Widget and choose a specific album, so it only shows pictures from an album you picked yourself. That does not stop the other features from suggesting a photo, so treat it as a tidy-up, not as privacy.

To remove a single Memory, open it, tap the More (…) button and look for Delete Memory. It deletes the Memory movie, not your photos, and Photos may build a new one later if the photos are still in your library.

1. 1Open Settings, then Apps, then Photos. On iOS 16 and 17 it is simply Settings, then Photos.
2. 2Find Show Featured Content and switch it off.

This stops Photos from suggesting featured photos and memories in places like Search, For You and the widget. The setting names move a little between iOS versions, so look for the words Featured Content in the Photos settings. Your photos and albums are untouched, and you can switch it back on at any time.

Feature settings are a polite request to an algorithm. The photo is still in your library, still syncs through iCloud Photos, still appears in a search, and anyone you hand the phone to can still scroll to it.

Hiding it moves it to the Hidden album, which takes it out of the library, Memories, Featured Photos and widgets. Since iOS 16 the Hidden album can also ask for Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode; check Settings, then Apps, then Photos, and make sure Use Face ID is on. The photo is still part of the Photos app and still syncs, so see how to hide photos on iPhone for what that does and does not protect.

If you want it gone for good, deleting it first moves it to Recently Deleted, where it stays for up to 30 days. See how to permanently delete photos on iPhone for every copy you may have forgotten.

For a picture you want to keep but never meet by accident, the cleanest option is to keep it somewhere the Photos app does not index. Lockboxy is a private, encrypted vault for iPhone; photos stored in it are not part of your Photos library, so they cannot appear in Memories, Featured Photos or the widget.

1. 1Open Lockboxy with its passcode and go to the Media tab.
2. 2Import the photos from your library.
3. 3Optionally choose to remove the originals from your library. iOS shows its own confirmation before anything is deleted, and deleted photos still sit in Recently Deleted for up to 30 days until you empty it.

Everything in Lockboxy is encrypted with AES-256 on your device. There is no account and no server holding a copy. See Lockboxy vs the iPhone Hidden album for an honest comparison.

• Removing the originals is optional, so if you leave them, the photos stay in your library and can still surface there.
• Copies elsewhere are not touched: a shared album, a Shared Library, a chat app's own saved copy and other backups.
• The vault key comes from your passcode. If you forget it, nobody, including us, can open the vault, unless you made a Recovery Key (Premium) beforehand. Without an encrypted backup the vault exists only on that one phone.
• Which plan includes what, and the price, are on the Premium page; the app shows the exact price before you buy.