June 9, 2025
Introduction: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega gives tips and storage ideas for organizing the photos on your smartphone. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”
Growing up, I had an instamatic camera. Having a camera was great, because it allowed me to take photos of activities, events, and things that I thought were important. The not-so-great part was being limited in how many photos I could take. With the cost of film and processing, the ability to take photos of the everyday was somewhat limited.
Fast forward to today when cell phones provide us limitless opportunities for capturing images of anything and everything, including the endless selfies we see posted online. What do I take photos of? Family, books, food, research, and cemeteries. Some of these images are ones I want to keep and have accessible to me or my children, but others are just reminders to me of what book I want to buy or a great meal I had while traveling. What this means is I have thousands of photos stored on my phone to the point that it’s overwhelming.
Illustration credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html
That’s the problem with mobile devices. We take lots of photos, but we don’t always do anything with them. Those photos become ephemeral, meaning they may have a short life and not exist in the future like those “old-fashioned” printed photographs of generations past. Some of our photos are meant to be ephemeral, like the photo of the book I want to buy, but others deserve to be saved and shared with family.
One of my goals has been to do something about this. To delete photos I don’t need, upload photos to the cloud or my computer that I want to keep, and share photos that need to be shared with family members and friends. Yes, I can download my photos to my computer – however, at this point I have many photos that I’d rather not store, such as those photos of books to read. I have also set up a cloud storage to store these photos, but once again I don’t want to pay for storage for photos that aren’t meant to be “permanent.”
What Did I Do?
I decided to look online for tips from professionals on how to organize cell phone photos. There are a few reasons why you want to make sure that you spend time decluttering and organizing your phone photos. One is space. Your phone doesn’t have endless space for photos, apps, etc., so making sure that you delete or download photos can free up space on your phone.
The other reason for organizing your phone photos is to make it easier to find important-to-you photos, whether it’s that favorite photo of great-aunt Mary or it’s the pages of records from your last research trip. The ability to find what you need is an important one.
Finally, as genealogists I think the ability to preserve our photos is one to consider. In the future, we risk photos becoming rare. Not because we don’t take more than in generations past but because no one ensures they are preserved and shared with others so that they will be passed down. Curating your collection of photos, uploading them to your computer or cloud drive, printing them, and sharing them is essential.
The following tips are ones that are for iPhones, but you may find similar features on your phone, no matter what the brand.
Some of what I used as I started decluttering, organizing, and curating my phone photos include:
Create Albums
Repeatedly the number one tip I found online was to use the iPhones albums feature. “Albums” are basically file folders to store your photos in. I created albums for the types of photos I take the most, such as:
- Family
- Cemeteries
- Research
- Food
- Travel
- Books
I started at the very first photo on my phone (from 2016!) and started adding each photo to a specific album. This was a great exercise because it also allowed me time to think through whether I needed to keep each photo. I was able to delete many photos as I went through this process.
The benefit of organizing photos by albums is that you can more easily find the photos you need. I can see all kinds of ways this benefits family historians, including creating an album for a research trip, reunion, or as you copy family photos.
The way to access albums on your iPhone is to choose a photo and click on the three horizontal dots at the top left of the screen. Then choose “Add to Album.” From there you can add the photo to an existing album, or you can click on the plus sign (+) to create a new album. Under “Add to Album” will be the last album you used, making it easier to add multiple photos to the same album.
Favorites
One other tip mentioned repeatedly online was to use the “Favorites” feature to make finding important photos easier. On iPhones, your favorites are signified with a heart icon found at the bottom of the screen after you select a photo. I already use this for photos I want to access often, like the screenshot of my TSA number. This really helps to find those photos that you need quickly or repeatedly.
All favorites are stored in their own album. My only caution for you is to be mindful of how many favorites you have since it can become cluttered and difficult to find the one photo you need.
Get Them off Your Phone!
Depending on the online article, there were different suggestions for getting photos off your phone and onto your computer, cloud storage, or shared with others. I mentioned that I have paid for cloud storage and have had a storage system that backs up my phone. I’ve also purchased a storage device to download photos to. So, I do have some systems in place. What you decide to do to take your photos from your cell phone to a computer, cloud service – or to print them – is up to you and how much you want to spend. Third-party apps can help; find these in your phone’s app store.
The other thing I’ve been doing is, if it is a photo of a photo or document, I am uploading to my online tree so that other people have access to it.
A Worthy Goal: Declutter and Organize Your Phone Photos
There are other tips you can find online for organizing and sharing your phone photos. These include 3rd-party apps that can delete duplicates and organize. I’ve chosen to try to get my phone photos decluttered by using the tools that are already on my iPhone.
Have you thought about the photos languishing on your phone’s memory? What are you doing to ensure they are preserved? Please share your tips in the comments below.
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Note on the header image: five different smartphones. Credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html
