Best way to organize thousands of phone photos so I can actually find them?

Pick one master home for everything (Apple Photos or Google Photos) and stick to it; turn on full‑resolution upload so the cloud copy is your source of truth. On a Mac/PC, sign into both services once, export originals from the one you're not keeping, and import them into the master so the whole history lives in one place. On that computer, enable a full local copy of the master library, and also export an organized archive to an external drive in simple folders like Year/Month; don't hand‑sort, just batch‑rename if you want dates in filenames. Use the Duplicates view in your photo app or a tool like Gemini Photos/PhotoSweeper to merge dupes before and after you import, so you don't keep five copies of the same pic. Then lean on the app's strengths: search by date/place/people, tap Favorite on the keepers, and make a few ongoing albums for things you'll actually reuse like "Kids school," "Travel docs," or "Receipts."

Make it a five‑minute weekly habit: open the master app, delete obvious junk (screenshots, bursts you don't need), favorite the best from the week, and drop anything important into its album. For safety, use the 3‑2‑1 rule: your master cloud library, a local external‑drive copy of originals, and a second backup of that drive (either a second drive you rotate off‑site or a computer backup service). If storage is tight, do a yearly export of originals to the external drive and spot‑check you can open random files before you clear local device space. Don't convert formats when exporting; keep originals so Live Photos, bursts, and metadata survive. Put two reminders on your calendar—monthly mini‑triage and quarterly "export and test restore"—and you'll be able to find anything fast without ever doing a giant manual cleanup again.

Nobody tells you how much time this garbage eats. Pick one service, pay the stupid storage fee, and turn the other completely off so it stops duplicating.

Then schedule a monthly export of originals to a cheap external SSD and be done with it. Disable Optimize Storage if you actually want local copies.

Idk, this worked for me with minimal effort. I chose Google Photos as the hub and turned on upload on my phone at original quality. On my Mac I installed the Google Drive uploader to pull in the old iCloud Photos library once, then I disabled iCloud so I didn't keep doubling. I left iCloud as a read-only archive for a month to be safe. After the import, I deleted obvious dupes using the built-in cleanup tool and let face and place indexing finish.

Day to day, I do almost nothing. I heart favorites when I want to find something later and I have one album per year with monthly sub-albums for events that matter. For admin stuff like receipts or serial numbers, I tag them by typing a consistent word in the caption like receipt or warranty so search nails it. Once a quarter I export originals to an external SSD with folders by year and month. If I forget, no drama, I just do it next quarter.

Free plan + rclone + external drive. Chaotic, but cheap.

Lost my kid's first birthday pics because I trusted optimize storage and a flaky Wi‑Fi. Sick feeling, learned the hard way, fixed it with a boring routine. The fix wasn't magic, just eliminating choices and automating the rest.

I picked one home for photos and stopped pretending I could keep two in sync. I exported full originals from the other service, imported them once, and then turned its sync off everywhere. I let the chosen app index faces and locations so search actually works, and I use favorites for the top shots I'll reuse. I made one running album per month so I can scroll time, not chaos. Once on the first weekend, I plug in an external SSD and export originals into folders named by year and month. Twice a year, I copy that SSD to a second drive and stick it in a drawer at work. If anything dies, I still have my stuff.

It's not clever, but it's been reliable for two years and I can find things in under a minute. If you're overwhelmed, start with last year forward and backfill later.

First, stop letting both iCloud and Google fight. Pick the one you like looking at, turn on full-resolution upload, and dump everything into it. I thought I could juggle both and ended up with eight versions of my dog in a halloween taco costume, none of them original. On a laptop, download originals from the runner-up service, import to the winner, then turn off sync on the loser so it quits duplicating. After that, let the app finish face recognition and places; it's your future search engine.

Then make one album per month and toss only the keepers there during idle moments.

Hit favorite on the top shots, and make a shared album called Keepers so family stops texting you for the same photos. Once a month, plug in an external SSD and export originals from the winner app to a folder named by year and month. I set a calendar reminder called Photo Dump Day because past me cannot be trusted. It takes ten minutes, and if I skip, next month I do both. That's it, no perfection, just consistent dumping.

I standardized on Google Photos so both houses see the same library. Shared albums by year and each kid, plus one called Docs for school and receipts.

Weekly I favorite the best; quarterly I export originals to an SSD by YYYY-MM. Both parents can find things without texting now.

Easy — delete everything older than last Tuesday. Boom, organized. Or just keep swiping like it's a slot machine and call it mindfulness.

I made it fun so I'd actually do it. Friday Photo Sweep, ten minutes, a timer, chill music.

New pics land in an Inbox album, favorites get promoted to a tiny Top 100, and the rest roll into a monthly folder while auto-backup hums in the background. Once a month I export originals to a little SSD during coffee and it weirdly feels like a win.

Pick one master library and stick to it. Enable automatic backup to two places. Use date-based folders and avoid manual albums. Rely on search and favorites for recall.