Although nobody in Italy knows it, the Google Photos app has included a very powerful and precise facial recognition technology . This function, which in Europe has been forcibly removed due to legal problems, allows you to group photographs based on the faces that are there and therefore allows you to easily search for saved photos where Claudio is, where Alessia is etc.
If you think that there are no privacy problems in this (as the European Union sees it), you can still activate the recognition of the faces of Google Photos with a simple trick on Android smartphones and on iPhone .
The trick is to simulate, for just a minute, the connection from the United States so that you can activate facial recognition that will remain functional even afterwards.
To simulate the connection from the USA, you can use a VPN app for Android and iPhone such as, for example, Tunnelbear which is immediate and easy even for iPhone
Tunnelbear requires you to register an account if it hasn't been done before in order to function.
Once opened and logged in, set up the connection from the USA from the Tunnelbear world map and grant the system permission.
Once the VPN is active, open the Android settings, go to the Apps section, find Google Photos, press on it and delete all data and cache.
On Android 6 and later versions, press on Memory and then on Clear data .
On the iPhone, it is better to remove the Google Photos app and reinstall it from the App Store.
No photos will be deleted from this operation which is only a reset of the Google Photos settings.
At this point, reopen Google Photos, perform the initial configuration and, from the side menu, open the Google Photos settings.
You will now notice a new " face grouping " entry which is only to be activated and which allows you to view and search for photos of loved ones by their name.
After this change, go back to Tunnelbear and disable the VPN.
Once face recognition is activated, Google Photos will scan all the images creating an index based on the face of the people who are there.
After about 10 or 15 minutes, from the search you will see the various recognized faces that are most present in the photos and you can assign them a name that will then be automatically assigned to the new photos.
The function is super powerful and if you use Google Photos to store all the photos taken in the cloud, you can search for the faces of all the people who have appeared in our photographs at least once.
With this function enabled, you can also share photo collections with another person, only those where a specific face appears.
