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Lennart_T
User level: Level 1 (10 points)

Photos on Mac: Days view does not show all photos by day

When using Photos on my Mac, how can I see the photos sorted by day?

Here is what I have tried:

When viewing the library, I can see the buttons Years, Months, Days and All Photos. Clicking on "Days" shows SOME photos for each day. There is always a button at lower right each day that says +5 or +8 or whatever. When I click on that, the display changes back to "All Photos" and I can't always determine when a day ends and another starts.

I'm using macOS Monterey 12.7.6 if that matters.


UPDATE: I see now that the "Days" view sometime groups days together (like "7-9 Oct"), if there are just a few photos per day. I don't want that either. It even shows a photo from the 9th before a photo from the 7th. I definitely don't want that!

Posted on Oct 17, 2026 11:50 PM

8 replies

léonie
User level: Level 10 (205,585 points)

Oct 18, 2026 4:05 AM in response to Lennart_T

That is unfortunately the intended behavior. The Days view is only showing a curated selection of the photos for each day. Your Mac is spending a lot of computation time to select the best photos for the Days view.

Creating a smart album is currently the best way to see all photos taken on a certain day.

occasionally it helps to type the date into the search field. But it is hard to guess the correct format that will work.

Frequently Photos is exchanging the day and the month part of the date. I just tried to search for all photos taken on October 2, 2026 and gt the photos taken on February 10, 2026.

Then I changed the date format in the system settings to yyyy-mm-dd and searched for 2026-10-02 and Photos showed me exactly the photos taken on that day.



Yer_Man
User level: Level 10 (166,900 points)

Oct 18, 2026 12:26 AM in response to Lennart_T

If you want to see all the images from a single day then a simple Smart Album will do it.


File -> New Smart Album


Date Captured -> Is -> the date you want.

Richard.Taylor
User level: Level 7 (25,466 points)

Oct 18, 2026 8:13 AM in response to Lennart_T

Lennart_T wrote: Thank's but I don't want to create hundreds of smart albums every year.

Smart albums are one of the great powers of Photos. You can also use a Smart Album for setting a rage of dates, like for a week or for the days of your vacation.


Having hundreds of albums is very workable by organizing them into folders which can contain other folders as well as albums.

Organizing Photos with Folders & Albums - Apple Community


Since Smart Albums don't show up on iPhones, I copy pictures from Smart Albums to regular albums so I can see them on my iPhone and iPad.

Lennart_T Author
User level: Level 1 (10 points)

Oct 18, 2026 4:16 AM in response to léonie

Thank you.

Not what I wanted to hear, but at least I know I didn't do something wrong.

I just wish that Photos stopped trying to be smart.

I can see that my Photos library is updated even if I haven't opened it for days. I have read that it updates "Faces". Will it ever finish?


I just wish Apple had kept iPhoto as an alternative. I really miss "events" and "ratings".

léonie
User level: Level 10 (205,585 points)

Oct 18, 2026 4:28 AM in response to Lennart_T

One good news: the star-ratings have come back on macOS27 Golden Gate. And with iCloud Photos they will sync to our iPhone with iOS27.



Can your Mac be upgraded to Golden Gate? A Mac with Apple Silicon is required.


On my older Macs I have simulated the rating stars with keywords, but the keywords could not be shown as badge overlay on the thumbnails. On Golden Gate the rating stars are shown on the thumbnails and I can assign them with a keyboard shortcut ⌥5, ⌥4, etc.




léonie
User level: Level 10 (205,585 points)

Oct 18, 2026 5:53 AM in response to Lennart_T

I hope your nice Intel Macs will survive for several more years. I am also having an Intel Mac from 2019 and even an 2015 Mac with Mojave, where I can still manage my old iPhoto Libraries. But I do not use the old Macs on the Internet, once there are no longer security updates for the old system versions.


Lennart_T Author
User level: Level 1 (10 points)

Oct 18, 2026 12:29 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thank's but I don't want to create hundreds of smart albums every year.

Lennart_T Author
User level: Level 1 (10 points)

Oct 18, 2026 5:02 AM in response to léonie

Thank for the information. I only have Intel Macs, one iMac Pro, one iMac 27" 2019 and one MacBook Pro 16" 2019.

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256378222