In this post, we will show you how to sort photos by Favorites in Windows 11. The Photos app in Windows has a ‘Favorites’ feature that allows you to mark certain photos or videos as your ‘Favorites’ or ‘Preferred items’. Once marked as favorites, these items are organized into a separate folder, making it convenient for you to browse through your preferred content without searching the entire photo library.
By default, the photos are arranged by date in descending order in the Favorites folder. That means the most recent photos appear first, followed by older photos in chronological order. However, you may sort them in a different order if you’d like to focus on the photos that are most significant to you.
How do I sort photos in Windows 11?
In Windows 11, you can sort photos using the File Explorer. Open File Explorer and navigate to the folder containing the photos you want to sort. Then click on the Sort menu in the top ribbon and select an option for Sort. If you want to sort photos by favorites, add them to the Favorites folder in the Photos app and then apply the required sorting.
How to sort photos by Favorites in Windows 11
To sort photos by favorites, you should already have a few photos marked as ‘Favorites’ within the photos app. To mark a photo as ‘Favorite’, simply open it and click on the heart icon at the top (you can only mark photos as favorites for the folders you’ve added to the Photos app. If you open a photo from any other folder, the option will be greyed out).
Here’s what you need to do to sort photos by Favorites on your Windows 11 PC:
- Open the Photos app.
- Navigate to the ‘Favourites’ folder.
- Sort photos by Date/Name.
Let us see the above steps in detail.
Type ‘photos’ in the Windows Search bar and click Open next to the Photos app that appears on top of the search results. You will see the Photos app with all your photos listed nicely on the app’s interface.
Navigate to the Favorites folder in the left panel. Your favorite photos will be displayed on the right panel.
You will see a Sort menu above the photo thumbnails, near the top-right corner. Click on that menu to see the available sort options.
The Photos app allows you to sort your favorite photos in Ascending or Descending order based on various factors, such as Date Taken, Date Created, Date Modified, and Name.
You may select an option and then specify the order in which you want to sort the photos. For example, to sort the photos by their date of modification in ascending order, select ‘Date Modified’ and ‘Ascending’ from the Sort menu. Your photos will be sorted in real time.
Delete the ‘Non-Favorites’
When you mark photos as favorites, Windows doesn’t create a copy of them on the disk drive. ‘Favorites’ is just a folder in the Photos app that contains references to the photos in the original folder. So if you’re looking to sort photos so that you may keep your ‘favorite’ photos and delete the rest of the items from a particular folder, there’s no easy way to do so using the Photos app. However, there’s a trick! You may enable the ‘Ratings’ column in the File Explorer.
When you mark a photo as ‘Favorites’, Windows automatically sets a ‘four-star’ rating for it. This is reflected within the Rating column in the File Explorer. To enable the Rating column, change the folder View to Details and right-click on the space next to the column headings. Select Rating. Once the Rating column appears, click on the column header to sort photos by their ratings. All your favorite photos will come up at the top. You may now delete the rest of the photos from the folder.
This is how you can easily sort your favorite photos within the Windows Photos app. I hope you find this information useful.
Read: Cannot open JPG or PNG files in Windows.
How do I filter photos in Windows?
You can use the Filter option within the Windows Photos app to filter your photos. Click on the Start button icon and navigate to Photos under All apps. The Photos app will open. Click on Folders in the left panel and select Add a folder. Add the folder that contains the media you want to filter within the Photos app. Once added, open the folder and select Photos/Videos from the Filter menu in the top-right corner.
Read Next: Next or Previous arrows missing in the Photos App of Windows.
