Apple Photos Scanning

Discussions center on Apple's on-device and iCloud-based photo scanning, analysis, and organization features in the Photos app across iOS, macOS, and iPadOS, including privacy concerns, syncing behaviors, and comparisons to Google Photos.

➡️ Stable 0.8x Hardware
3,144
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#1103
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2008
2
2009
11
2010
57
2011
67
2012
104
2013
156
2014
79
2015
166
2016
95
2017
104
2018
124
2019
148
2020
251
2021
403
2022
246
2023
302
2024
367
2025
343
2026
119

Keywords

OSX UX OP HN HEIC SDR apple.com OOTB NFS JPG photos icloud sync iphone ios app apple photo mac google photos

Sample Comments

throwaway2245 Jan 15, 2021 View on HN

iOS has started doing this, at least for photos.

sgregnt Sep 25, 2022 View on HN

What's the difference? Potentially apple itself can fecide to scan all your photos on the phone....

briandear Jan 3, 2019 View on HN

Apple photos does that — on device.

fragmede May 16, 2024 View on HN

Apple Photos already does this but you have to use icloud

efrafa Jul 18, 2019 View on HN

It works on iOS without access to your photos. Parent is right.

nomel Aug 9, 2021 View on HN

The consumer can control it by not enabling iCloud photo sync, right?

PpEY4fu85hkQpn Aug 14, 2021 View on HN

Only photos that get sent to icloud are "scanned"

seivan Aug 6, 2015 View on HN

I think Apple might be doing this themselves, dig into Photos.app on Mac Os.

jdxcode Mar 4, 2021 View on HN

iCloud photos aren’t just jpegs in a directory

tedmiston Apr 26, 2016 View on HN

Apple does something similar in Photos on iOS.