How to stop seeing your ex in photo memories

To stop seeing your ex in memories, use each app’s own setting: hide people and dates in Facebook Memories, hide their face from memories in Google Photos, feature them less in the iPhone Photos app, and archive posts on Instagram. Hiding doesn’t delete anything, so you can undo it later. When a photo is worth keeping but they aren’t, you can edit them out.

Menus move around between app updates, so this guide names the settings to look for and links each company’s help page for the current steps.

Facebook Memories: hide people and dates

Facebook Memories has its own preferences, where you can hide specific people and dates you no longer want to be reminded of. You can also choose which Memories notifications you get. Facebook says these settings are in its app for Android, iPhone, and iPad, not on computers: open Memories in the app and look for its settings. The current steps are in the Facebook Help Center.

Hiding dates helps when your ex isn’t tagged in everything. It covers those dates, whoever is in the posts.

Google Photos: hide people and pets from memories

In Google Photos, the Memories section of Photos settings lets you hide faces from the featured memories at the top of the Photos view. According to Google Photos Help, there are two levels:

• Show less: you won’t get memories about them, but they may still appear in group photos included in memories.
• Blocked: they won’t appear in memories at all, including group photos with others.

The same settings let you hide dates or turn featured memories off. Google notes that changes can take some time to show up and that face hiding may not work perfectly in every photo. If you can’t find your ex’s face to hide, hide the dates instead. These settings only change the featured memories, not your library or albums.

iPhone Photos: feature a person less

The Photos app can show someone less often, or not at all, in memories, featured photos, and the Photos widget. Start from a photo of your ex and look for Don’t Feature a Person, then choose Feature This Person Less or Never Feature This Person. You can also turn off featured content altogether for a while. The current steps are in Apple’s iPhone User Guide.

To keep particular photos out of sight, hide them. According to Apple, hidden photos move to the Hidden collection and don’t show anywhere else, and with iCloud Photos they’re hidden on all your devices. You can unhide them at any time.

Instagram: archive posts and tidy up old stories

On Instagram, the tool for this is the archive. According to Instagram’s Help Center, archiving a post hides it from your profile so other people can’t see it. The post keeps its likes and comments, and you can show it on your profile again at any time.

Old stories live in your Stories archive and in any Highlights you made. From the Stories help pages, you can delete a story from your archive or edit a highlight to take it out.

What hiding doesn’t do

• The photos are still there. Scroll back far enough, or search, and you’ll find them. That’s the point of hiding, but it means you can still come across them.
• It only catches what the app recognizes. Face hiding can miss photos, which is why hiding dates is a useful backup.
• Other people’s photos are theirs. Your settings change what you’re shown, not what friends post or share.
• Settings can be reset. On iPhone, Reset People & Pets Suggestions brings everyone back, including your ex.

When hiding isn’t enough: edit them out

Sometimes the photo is one you want to see again. The trip, the birthday, the view you waited all day for. If your ex is the only thing wrong with it, you can edit them out and keep the rest. With Remove Your Ex, you upload the photo, describe who should go in your own words, and download the edit. There’s no brush or mask to draw.

Before

After AI-edited

Each photo costs 1 credit, including a free second edit if the first isn’t right, and failed edits return the credit. You can upload up to 10 photos per batch, and there’s no subscription. Current prices are on the pricing page.

Family photos work too. You describe your ex, not the kids, so it’s clear who should go and who stays. When your ex is holding or hugging a child, there’s more to rebuild, so expect those to take more care. Remove Your Ex is only for removing a person: asking for any change to a child’s body or clothing isn’t allowed. More in how to remove your ex from family photos.

Uploading doesn’t change the copy on your phone or computer, so the original stays where it was, hidden or not. Your photos are stored privately and deleted automatically after 90 days. Google doesn’t use them to train its models. You can delete them sooner from My photos. You need to be 18 or older to use Remove Your Ex, and it isn’t available in the EU/EEA, the UK, or Switzerland yet.

Not sure what to do with them yet?

Hiding, deleting, and editing all have their place, and many people mix all three. If you’re still deciding, read should you delete photos of your ex? It has the full steps for iPhone and Google Photos, plus what happens when you delete. For every way to edit them out, including the free erasers on your phone, start with how to remove your ex from a photo, or compare them in the best app to remove a person from a photo.