iOS 27 brings lots of new ways to manage your photo library, from a keyword search and new AI editing tools, to a better way of favouriting your favourite pictures. Well, iOS 27 brings a new star rating system to Photos, but you need to enable it first. Let me show you how it works.

And before I do that, real quick, hi, I’m Jacob. I’m your friendly Apple expert here on YouTube, helping you make the most of your devices. If you want more short, friendly QuickTips, please do press subscribe.

Okay, so I’m in the Photos app, and at the moment, I can just hold onto a photo like normal. But if I tap onto my Collections tab at the bottom, I can then go onto my profile picture in the top right-hand corner of the screen. This brings up some settings for the Photos app. And if I scroll down a little bit, there’s a new option that says Show Rating Controls. This is brand new. I’m going to turn that toggle on, and then jump back to my main photo library.

At this stage, I’ve got a photo here that I like, but it’s not a favourite, it’s a four-star picture, I mentioned earlier. Well, now in the top right corner of that picture, there’s a new option to add a star rating. I can tap on that, and I can choose one, two, three, four, or five stars. It doesn’t take long, but it is a really good new way of categorising your pictures.

And then it’s really easy to find the photos that you’ve starred as well. At the top of your Library tab, you’ve got the little filter button, that’s the one with the three horizontal lines. And if you tap on there, you can now filter by rating. And what’s more, you can select multiple ratings, so you can do three stars and above by selecting three, four, and five stars. And that will now filter your photo library to show you just the pictures that you’ve given those star ratings to.

It’s a really nice way of organising your pictures, but it might take a little bit of time to get set up. So before you grab a cup of tea and start doing it, please do subscribe, and then maybe check out this quick tip later.