Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Feenician

macrumors 603
Jun 13, 2016
5,313
5,100
Kind of an off topic question, but I guess your contacts need to have a photo so the Photos app can scan and match from it, right? Thanks in advance.

I don't use or assign contact photos at all. My iPhone photo library already had faces assigned that I'd done in OS X photos app and they persisted after upgrading to iOS 10
 

JerTheGeek

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 15, 2014
1,993
487
I don't use or assign contact photos at all. My iPhone photo library already had faces assigned that I'd done in OS X photos app and they persisted after upgrading to iOS 10
So your faces from Mac automatically synced to your iPhone? Is that because you're on macOS Sierra?
 

Feenician

macrumors 603
Jun 13, 2016
5,313
5,100
So your faces from Mac automatically synced to your iPhone? Is that because you're on macOS Sierra?

No, in fact from what I read it may be the opposite. I need sync my Mac and phone and I upgraded my phone before the Mac. Faces synced over icloud with iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 and it seems they were retained in the database on the phone because it had named faces quickly after upgrade. From what I've read there's currently no sync of memories or faces with iOS 10 and Sierra - that's what the release notes for Sierra say.

I think it'd be fair to say you should expect unpredictable and largely undocumented results for now with both betas early and in flux.
 

LordQ

Suspended
Sep 22, 2012
3,582
5,653
I don't use or assign contact photos at all. My iPhone photo library already had faces assigned that I'd done in OS X photos app and they persisted after upgrading to iOS 10
Interesting. What if I don't have a Mac? I guess it has to scan and match the faces from somewhere else - that's why I suppose contacts should have a contact picture for this to work.
 

Feenician

macrumors 603
Jun 13, 2016
5,313
5,100
Interesting. What if I don't have a Mac? I guess it has to scan and match the faces from somewhere else - that's why I suppose contacts should have a contact picture for this to work.

Then you can do it right from iOS. Open a picture with faces, hit "Details", select the face and name it. I don't know if it does any of this automatically from contact pictures or not since, as I said, I don't use them I'm afraid.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LordQ

freediverx

macrumors 65816
Feb 19, 2006
1,010
1,022
The face metadata syncs now (iOS 9 and OS X), I don't believe the actual recognition data syncs though. That whole separation/privatization of data and all.

1) Why couldn't face synchronization be end-to-end encrypted like iMessage?

2) I read somewhere that Photos app face syncing is specifically listed by Apple as missing from the current beta, suggesting it's planned for a future build.
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,438
2,665
OBX
1) Why couldn't face synchronization be end-to-end encrypted like iMessage?

2) I read somewhere that Photos app face syncing is specifically listed by Apple as missing from the current beta, suggesting it's planned for a future build.
1) dunno why it isn't or why they don't
2) yeah that was what the release notes said, not sure if beta 2 or 3 still has the same (not participating in the ios beta this go around).
 

JerTheGeek

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 15, 2014
1,993
487
1) dunno why it isn't or why they don't
2) yeah that was what the release notes said, not sure if beta 2 or 3 still has the same (not participating in the ios beta this go around).
Based on release notes this functionality still is not present on the current beta of iOS 10. Probably next beta I'd expect.
 

lagwagon

Suspended
Oct 12, 2014
3,899
2,759
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
1) Why couldn't face synchronization be end-to-end encrypted like iMessage?

They talked a bit about why in an interview shortly after WWDC.

Aside from some technical reasons not yet solved. There is also the reason of. That's it's done in each individual device, on device. If someone has an iMac, iPad and iPhone. Which device then becomes the "master" device to sync to all other devices you own when they're all doing their own individual scanning?

I don't remember everything they said, so I'm sure I'm leaving some other things out.
 

trenchantly

macrumors newbie
Jun 13, 2011
7
0
I have another photos question.
I set up the faces in my iCloud photo library on my iPad, and it worked great.
But on my iPhone it is showing some faces but not the same as my iPad. Has anyone gotten the people to sync?

No they don't. Which is insane.
 

Smigit

macrumors 6502
Feb 21, 2011
408
265
This is my biggest issue with the new OS updates...it makes the feature much less useful as there's no incentive to fix bad results if I have to do it across three devices. They could have stuck to in device processing and allowed synchronisation within Apple Photos apps only, but stripped the metadata from any export.

Aside from some technical reasons not yet solved. There is also the reason of. That's it's done in each individual device, on device. If someone has an iMac, iPad and iPhone. Which device then becomes the "master" device to sync to all other devices you own when they're all doing their own individual scanning?

The issue of what edit wins isn't a big deal, same applies to other file types. If they timestamped edits and whether the edit was made by iOS or the user, you could handle most cases with logic that the most recent user edit wins, and if no user edit has been made either the oldest or newest iOS edit wins. Sure you can create infinite "but what if" scenarios, but generally with these things simple logic that's deterministic works best.

The other thing that simplifies it is there is only one correct answer, a face will reference one person and it should always be the same person. There's more chance for ambriguity when dealing with say a text document where two versions are more likely to wildly diverge. On the chance the names don't match, maybe due to a typo or whatever, the photos apps have the ability to merge two faces anyway.
 

Ries

macrumors 68020
Apr 21, 2007
2,330
2,918
Currently no, but the release notes always used to say:
"People syncing is not enabled via iCloud Photo Library in
iOS 10."

Means it could come in the future.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.