Has Your iPhone’s Memories Feature Emotionally Terrorized You? Here’s How To Turn It Off.

Technology

Have a personal grievance with the iPhone’s Memories feature because it’s served you depressing content you’d rather not see one too many times? Get in line, you’re not the only one with a complaint.

While it’s fun to get little alerts in the middle of the day with pics from your trip to Thailand or a throwback to your housewarming party two years ago, the “on this day” content the iPhone recycles isn’t always so welcome: You probably weren’t clamoring for a slideshow of photos of you and your ex all loved up through the years, set to some jaunty smooth jazz. But, iPhone Memories made sure you got it anyway.

“iPhone Memories really can’t read the room,” Kai Choyce, a comedian from Los Angeles, told HuffPost. “Nothing picks you up when you’re feeling really depressed like a surprise slideshow of your dead cat, set to saxophone music!”

Author William Shunn said he generally enjoys the iPhone Memories feature. But when it’s bad, it’s bad.

Case in point: Shunn lost a lot of friends in his divorce about seven years ago, so the ones that stuck around are pretty important to him. About a year ago, though, he learned that three of the friends he thought were loyal had been talking about him behind his back. It wasn’t much later that Memories rudely decided to show him a photo from the last time those friends met up with him and his new girlfriend for drinks.

“It was like a punch to the heart, not just because I’d lost them, but because they’d all pretended to still care about me. Memories couldn’t have timed it better for maximum hurt,” Shunn told HuffPost.

The tonally-off music makes the feature particularly funny or painful (or some combination thereof). For instance, this poor woman described getting a montage of her dead grandma and her late dog set to “fun” club music.

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The memories feature on my iPhone made a montage of both my dead dog and dead grandmother to “club” music.

I’m not crying at the club, you are.

— Nicole Flores (@notnaflores) January 25, 2021

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The memories feature on my iPhone made a montage of both my dead dog and dead grandmother to “club” music.

I’m not crying at the club, you are.

— Nicole Flores (@notnaflores) January 25, 2021

Katrina Johnson, a multimedia artist from Los Angeles, also has a love-hate relationship with the feature.

“There’s definitely a lot of grief sandwiched amongst the deranged memes and silly photos of animals in my photos, so that can kind of catch you off guard,” she said. “It’s bittersweet.”

She pointed to a recent slightly triggering experience with Memories as a prime example.

“I was shown Memories of a traumatizing hospital stay which occurred during a really horrific time in my life mental health wise, so that kind of sucked to revisit that unwillingly when I was just trying to find a recipe I took a photo of,” she said.

Clearly, the feature can be a lot to take in, but there’s ways to change it so it works for you. While you could prune your photo albums for pics that might give you a future jump scare, you could also just update your photo settings on your iPhone so Memories are less jarring.

Here’s how to turn it off or change your settings

Switching off Memories is pretty easy: Apple makes it so you can set the Photos app to show certain people, days and holidays less frequently, or nix them from your Memories altogether. (Can we get that in real life, too, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlight Mind”-style?)

To show a person less frequently, go to the Photos app on your iPhone, and open a photo of your persona non grata. Tap the … button in the right-hand corner, then tap Feature This Person Less. From there, you’ll be given some options: Feature This Person Less or Never Feature This Person. It’s basically the difference between seeing group photos that feature this person or never seeing pics of them, including group photos.

The iPhone gives you the option to feature one particular person less.

If you want to see fewer holiday photos ― maybe Christmas has been rough since you lost a close friend a few years ago ― go to Settings and then select Photos. Scroll down to Show Holiday Events and switch it off.

If holidays are triggering for you, change your iPhone settings so they don't pop up. — If holidays are triggering for you, change your iPhone settings so they don’t pop up.

If you want to turn off Memories altogether, go to Settings, then Apps, then Photos. Turn off Show Featured Content, and you’re good to go ― no more emotional jump scares for you!