With its highlighted images and memories, Apple wants you to experience nostalgia each time you turn on your phone. Whether it was an anniversary meal with your husband or an island trip with your buddies, the two iPhone capabilities combine to create “featured content” that highlights the most significant events in your life.
However, the Photos app isn’t the only place to find this highlighted material. Featured material may be found on widgets on your home screen and on the search page, among other places on your device.
That isn’t always a bad thing until you discover that your photo collection may contain outdated or embarrassing images that might not belong there and might even show up elsewhere.
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It can be annoying when these unexpected pictures appear on your iPhone at random, especially while you’re showing someone something on it or when someone else is using it. Fortunately, you can eliminate this problem.
Here’s how to prevent unsolicited photographs from showing up on your iPhone at random.
You may choose to display someone less often or not at all.
iOS will consider someone to be significant in your life if they are shown very prominently across your photo collection. That individual will undoubtedly appear in your device’s displayed photographs and memories. Reliving priceless moments with your favorite people is a joyful experience for most individuals.
You probably don’t want to see that person’s face appear on your phone at random if you no longer talk to them and their possessions aren’t as valuable. Although it would take a lot of work, you could go through your camera roll and remove all of the pictures and videos that feature that individual. Thankfully, there is a simple method for hiding pictures of a certain individual.
Open the pictures app, locate a picture or video of the person you wish to highlight less frequently, press the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner, and select display This Person Less to display them less frequently or not at all in recollections, highlights pictures, and widgets.
There are now two alternatives available to you:
Feature This Person Less: If this person is in a group shot, those may still show up, but you won’t see any individual images or videos of them in recollections or featured photographs.
Never include This individual: No pictures or videos, including group shots, will ever include this individual.
Additionally, memories and highlighted photographs can be fully disabled.
Now, not everyone’s surprising snapshot will feature a former friend or spouse. You might want to remove all memories and feature photographs from your phone if you’re concerned about an embarrassing snapshot of yourself or something rather indecent showing up on it.
Toggle off Show Featured Content under Apps > Photos in the Settings app. This will disable all of the device’s highlighted content, including as search results for photographs, widgets on your home screen, and albums in the photographs app.
Additional advice you may use to avoid unforeseen pictures
Although the two tactics I mentioned above are a good place to start, there are additional things you can do to stop certain images from showing up on your device.
- Take the picture widgets off of your home screen and lock screen. There is a photographs widget that only displays highlighted photos, which might be unwelcome or humiliating. Choose a picture widget that isn’t “featured” or just take them from your phone.
- Use the Photos app to hide groupings. You may now hide certain collections that could preview images you don’t want to see, starting with iOS 18. Select Customize & Reorder under Photos, then mark out the collections you wish to conceal. These collections include a variety of topics, such as People & Pets, Trips, and Recent Days. Some collections will be grayed out if you have deactivated highlighted content.
- Shut off recollections of the holidays. You may go to Settings > Apps > Photos and turn off Show Holiday Events if you don’t want to see memories of recent holidays, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving.
- Prevent images from showing up in search results. You could see pictures if you put something into the search bar. Toggle off Show App in Search and Show Content in Search under Settings > Apps > Photos to prevent this from happening.
- On your lock screen, avoid selecting a featured wallpaper. Featured photographs that change throughout the day may be set as your lock screen on iOS 18. In order to prevent undesired photographs from showing up on your lock screen, select a different wallpaper than the featured photos wallpaper.