With Facebook being one of the most popular social media platforms, many users have hundreds if not thousands of photos stored on their Facebook accounts. While the photos may be neatly organized by date on your Timeline, having so many photos in one long stream can make it difficult to find specific images when you want to look back on them.
The best way to organize all your Facebook photos is to sort them into different albums. Facebook’s album feature allows you to categorize your photos into separate collections based on time period, event, people, or any other grouping that makes sense for your pictures.
Why Should I Use Facebook Albums?
Here are some of the key reasons to use Facebook’s album feature for organizing your photos:
- Makes specific photos easier to find – Rather than scrolling through hundreds of photos in your timeline, albums let you access particular photo collections quickly
- Allows you to customize privacy – You can set privacy settings like public, friends, or only me for each individual album
- Lets you add context – Album names and descriptions provide context about the photos that your timeline alone does not
- Enables better storytelling – Curating related photos into albums creates mini-stories around events, trips, periods of your life, etc.
- Sharpens your memories – Scrolling through a concentrated album can conjure more vivid memories than seeing photos spread out chronologically
How to Create a New Photo Album
Creating new photo albums is easy and can be done right from Facebook’s website as well as their mobile app. Here are the steps:
- Go to your Facebook profile and click on the Photos link in the left sidebar
- On the Photos page, click on the Albums tab at the top
- Click on the + Create Album button
- Enter a name for your album in the text field
- You can also add a location and description to provide context
- Click Create Album once you have entered a name
Your new album will now show up in your Albums tab on Facebook. Now you can start adding photos!
How to Add Photos to an Album
Populating your new albums with photos is just as easy. There are a couple different ways to do this:
Add Photos Already on Your Timeline
- Go to the album where you want to add photos
- Click “Add Photos” at the top of the album
- You’ll see a grid of your timeline photos – select all the photos you want to add
- Once you’ve made your selections, click Done in the bottom right
This allows you to quickly pull photos already on your timeline into any album with just a couple clicks.
Upload Photos From Your Computer
- Go to the album you want to add new photos to
- Click “Add Photos” at the top of the album
- Click “Upload Photos” at the top of the popup window
- Select photos to upload from your computer files
- Click Open once you’ve chosen your photos
Uploading directly from your computer to an album lets you add brand new photos that aren’t on your timeline yet and organize them right away into albums.
Mobile App
The Facebook mobile app also makes it very easy to add photos directly into existing albums or create an album on the fly. From your News Feed, simply tap on Photo/Video at the top and you will see your album list. Tap any album to add photos or tap Create Album to make a new one.
On the upload screen you can choose photos from your camera roll or take a photo directly in the Facebook app to add to your selected album.
How to Edit Album Names & Descriptions
As your photo collection grows over time, you may want to revisit album names and descriptions to keep them up to date and accurate. Updating album info is easy:
- Navigate to the album whose details you want to modify
- Click on the pencil Edit icon in the upper right of the album cover
- This will open a popup where you can edit the album name, location, description, and privacy
- Click Save after making your updates
For album covers, hover over the current cover photo and click Change Photo/Video to pick a new cover image that represents the album.
How to Rearrange Album Order
You may want to reorder your photo albums to prioritize the collections you access most frequently or group similar albums together. Reordering is simple:
- Go to your Facebook Photos page and click the Albums tab
- Click on Reorder Albums in the upper right
- Drag and drop albums into your desired order
- Click Save when you’ve arranged your albums how you want
Your Facebook albums will now display in your new customized order.
How to Delete an Album
Over time you may find some albums are no longer relevant or useful to you. Deleting an album can help declutter your photo collection. Here’s how to remove albums you no longer need:
- Navigate to the album you want to delete
- Click the 3 dots icon in the upper right corner of the album cover
- Select Delete Album from the dropdown menu
- Click Confirm on the popup to permanently delete the album
Important: Deleting an album also deletes all the photos inside it, so be sure you want to remove any albums containing photos you want to keep.
How to Share Albums with Friends
Once you’ve organized your photos into albums, Facebook makes it easy to share those albums so friends can view and enjoy them too. You can share albums with individual friends, groups, or make them fully public.
Share Album with Individuals
- Go to the album you want to share and click Share below the cover photo
- Start typing friend’s names to select who to share with
- Customize the privacy for who can see the album
- Type an optional message
- Click Share
Share Album with a Group
- Go to the Share button below the album cover
- Click Share With a Group
- Select which group you want to share the album with
- Set the privacy and add an optional message
- Click Share to publish the album to the group
Make Album Public
- Go to More Options on the share popup
- Select Make Album Public
- Set the privacy drop-down to Public
- Click Share to make the album visible to anyone on Facebook
Use album sharing to showcase your favorite memories with friends and family or tell visual stories about important events you want to publicize.
How to Download an Album
While Facebook is great for storing, organizing, and sharing your photos online, you may also want to download albums to keep copies on your computer or mobile device. Here are a few ways to download albums:
Computer
- Go to the album you want to download and click the 3 dots icon in the upper right
- Select Download Album
- Choose your download resolution and click OK
- Your browser will download a zip file containing all the photos in high resolution
Facebook Mobile App
- Open the album you want to save
- Tap the 3 dots icon at the top
- Select Download Album
- Choose Download Small (optimized for mobile)
- The app will compile all photos into one compressed file
Downloading albums provides offline backup copies and also allows you to use the photos outside of Facebook if desired.
Conclusion
Facebook’s robust photo albums feature transforms your profile into a visual scrapbook chronicling your memories and life events. Making use of albums to organize your Facebook photos provides a plethora of benefits including easier searching, customizable privacy, enhanced storytelling, sharper memories, and more.
Creating, populating, editing, reordering, deleting, sharing, and downloading albums is easy and intuitive on both Facebook’s website and mobile apps. Spending a little time cleaning up your profile pictures into neatly arranged albums helps showcase your favorite captured moments in the best way.
So next time you upload a batch of photos from your latest vacation, special occasion, or everyday life updates, be sure to thoughtfully sort and categorize them right into any relevant albums. Your future self will thank you when it comes time to take a nostalgic trip through your photographic past!
Starting with your most recent pics first, dive into those new albums, revisit the greatest hits in your existing collections, reminisce on special memories, and appreciate how far you’ve come. Facebook’s albums feature prevents your profile photos from becoming just another long, disorganized camera roll and instead elevates them into a dynamic, visual diary.
How you arrange and share your photo albums also tells a story about yourself and what’s important to you. So take advantage of this great organizational tool to showcase your photographic journey in the most meaningful and shareable way.