Restricting Featured Photos on MacBook Pro Home Screen

Question

Level 1

54 points

Restricting Featured Photos on MacBook Pro Home Screen

Featured Photos randomly selects photos on MacBook Pro Home Screen. I just had an inappropriate medical head shot photo pop up as front and center on my home page as a featured photo -- is a NO NO NO. This was only for my doctor to view treating me, and was extremely disturbing to be plastered on my Home Screen as a FEATURED PHOTOS. I know computers know a lot about us but is my MacBook aware of who might be shoulder surfing me if I am in a coffee bar or other location, so they don't select inappropriate pictures? Who wants to be reminded of a bad picture of you which the purpose of the photo was to share with the doctor your symptoms, or if you were in an accident or pics of an ex. No way in any universe would I post up on my home page medical photos of people, contracts, receipts, screen shots of purchases, donations to charity etc..... QUESTION How can the user select an album or theme like nature for Featured Photos. One solution I saw was to go through 1000's of your photos in Photos to mark which ones to exclude. This would take 4 months of weekends to accomplish. Fortunately some biopsy pictures are in a hidden album, hopefully Apple would not select those because they are headshots, to be included in FEATURED PHOTOS. Any help folks? How can we protect our privacy from Featured Photos displaying inappropriate photos?

Posted on Dec 5, 2025 5:39 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 5, 2025 6:38 PM in response to Zech 4:6

I’ve never found the Featured support useful, and have it disabled everywhere.

Don’t show photos on your wallpaper. Or don’t show Featured photos.

Or do show photos, but select which folder or album (details)

It is also possible to hide selected photos. (details)

In the case of macOS, you can create a second photo library, and load photos you prefer not to expose there.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,444 points

Dec 5, 2025 9:02 PM in response to Zech 4:6

Zech 4:6 wrote:

Sadly one needs to keep some non public photos and I certainly don’t want to have to remember to carry a fob with me.

@muguy didn't suggest using a USB stick, they suggested placing photos you do not want in circulation somewhere else within your home user folder other so they are not associated with the Photo library. Create a folder within your "Documents" folder for those pictures you don't want to be part of the Photo Library.

Of course others have offered additional options as well.

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Answer 3

Zech 4:6 Author

Level 1

54 points

Dec 5, 2025 6:39 PM in response to muguy

Sadly one needs to keep some non public photos and I certainly don’t want to have to remember to carry a fob with me. I actually like the photo feature. I just don’t want it to display inappropriate photos. I would love for it to focus on all my travel photos. That would be fantastic. But for some reason, Featured Photos thinks my medical photos which were taken in the same month as Thanksgiving belong in the public display on my front page. The choice Featured Photos gave me was to deselect the entire memory for November thus deleting Thanksgiving because it had medical photos taken in the same month. Face palm.

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Answer 4

muguy

Level 10

91,148 points

Dec 5, 2025 6:22 PM in response to Zech 4:6

Remove whatever you deem offending from your library. Or, move photos you deem appropriate to a local folder and point your random images to use that folder.

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