Apple Photos in iOS 27: 5-star ratings arrive for photos and videos

Apple has given the Photos app in iOS 27 a small but genuinely useful upgrade: 5-star ratings for photos and videos on iPhone. You can score images and clips from 1 to 5 stars, but Apple doesn’t switch it on automatically. To use it, you’ll need to enable the option in Photos settings first, then you can start rating items and filtering your library by star count.

That gives you a lot more range than the heart-shaped Favorite button ever did. A photo you love can still sit at 5 stars, but now you’ve also got room for the ones that are good, just not your best. Once the setting is turned on, you can rate single shots or apply ratings in batches, then sort your library by those star ratings when you need to find something fast.

If you shoot a lot on your iPhone, this is the kind of update you’ll actually use. It makes it easier to sort vacation photos, work through a pile of similar shots or burst sequences, mark the standouts with higher ratings, leave the just-okay images at 2 or 3 stars, and tag weaker ones for deletion or archiving after a trip, event, or a long day with the camera.

The ratings are saved as metadata, which should make them play more nicely with other apps, including Adobe Lightroom. Apple is also adding this alongside a few other Photos features in iOS 27, including keyword tagging and editing tools such as Clean Up, Extend, and Reframe.

You’ll find the feature in the Photos app on iPhone once you’re running iOS 27.