You are scrolling through Google Photos, you land on one great shot — a specific dog, a particular sunset, a person's face — and you think: show me the rest like this one. That is the “more like this” instinct, and it is one of the most useful things you can ask a photo library to do. This guide covers how to find similar photos in Google Photos today, where the feature falls short, and how to get the same “more like this” result privately, on your own computer, without uploading a thing.
How to find “more like this” in Google Photos
Google Photos does not have a single button literally labelled “more like this,” but it gives you a few ways to pull up related shots:
- Search by what is in the photo. Google Photos automatically analyses your library, so you can search terms like dog, beach, birthday cake, or a location, and it returns every photo it recognises with that content.
- Open a photo and look for grouped results. When you open an image, Google may surface related items — other shots of the same person, place, or thing — and tapping a detected face or object runs a fresh search for more of the same.
- People & pets grouping. Faces (and pets) are clustered automatically, so tapping a face is the closest thing to a true “more of this one” button.
Google changes the Google Photos interface regularly, and the exact buttons differ between the phone app and the web. If you cannot find an option described here, search by the subject instead — that path has been the most reliable way to get “more like this” results over time.
Where Google Photos “more like this” falls short
The feature works, but it comes with trade-offs that matter if you take your library seriously:
- Everything has to be in the cloud. The recognition that powers “more like this” runs on Google's servers, which means your photos are uploaded and analysed off your device. If privacy is a concern, see our note on Google Photos and privacy.
- It needs an internet connection. No connection, no smart search — the intelligence lives online, not on your machine.
- Results are tied to Google's index, not your intent. You get what Google's model recognises, and there is no simple “show me visually similar frames to this exact photo” action for arbitrary images.
- It does not help you cull. Finding ten near-identical burst shots is easy; Google Photos will not help you pick the sharpest one or clear the duplicates.
The “google photos sub albums” gap
A closely related frustration is nesting: people search for Google Photos sub albums hoping to put albums inside albums — say a “2026 Trips” album containing “Rome,” “Tokyo,” and “Lisbon.” Google Photos does not support nested or sub albums. Your options are a flat list of albums or a single shared album, and that is it.
The usual workarounds are naming conventions (Trips — Rome, Trips — Tokyo) so related albums sort together, or leaning on search instead of manual folders. It works, but it is a manual tax that a library built around real folders and saved searches avoids entirely.
A private way to get “more like this” on your own PC
If the “more like this” behaviour is what you are really after — and you would rather not upload your whole library to do it — a local photo manager can give you the same result on your own machine. Memora is a free, local-first photo manager for Windows 10 and 11 that runs its AI entirely on-device:
- Find Similar Photos. Right-click any photo and Memora finds visually similar ones using AI — that is the literal “more like this” action, applied to whichever image you choose.
- Natural-language search. Type “sunset on the beach” or “dog in the snow” and Memora's semantic search surfaces matching shots — no manual tagging required. For the walkthrough, see how to find a specific photo.
- Duplicate Finder. The same near-match intelligence that finds similar photos also flags duplicates and near-duplicates, so a burst of twenty frames collapses to the few worth keeping.
- Smart Albums. Save any search as a reusable, one-click album, and organise by real folders on disk — a cleaner answer to the sub-albums problem than naming tricks.
- 100% on-device. Nothing is uploaded. The indexing and the AI run locally, so “more like this” works with no internet and no cloud account.
All of the search features above — Find Similar Photos, natural-language search, Smart Albums, and the Duplicate Finder — are in the free version of Memora. A one-time €29.99 Pro upgrade (no subscription) adds AI Culling, Face Recognition, and People tools for photographers who want more.
Google Photos vs a local “find similar” tool
| Google Photos | Memora (local desktop) | |
|---|---|---|
| “More like this” action | Via search / tapping a face or object | Right-click any photo → Find Similar |
| Where analysis runs | Google's cloud servers | Your own PC, 100% on-device |
| Needs upload / internet | Yes | No |
| Natural-language search | Yes | Yes, offline |
| Nested / sub albums | No | Real folders + saved Smart Albums |
| Duplicate / near-duplicate cleanup | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free with a storage cap; paid for more space | Free core; one-time €29.99 Pro |
When to switch away from Google Photos entirely
If “more like this” is just one of several things Google Photos does not do the way you want — nested albums, offline access, keeping originals off the cloud — it may be time to look at a full replacement rather than a workaround. We compare the main options in our guide to the best alternatives to Google Photos, which covers where each tool fits and where a local library like Memora makes sense.
The bottom line
Google Photos can absolutely surface more photos like a given one — search by subject, tap a face, and it does a decent job, as long as you are comfortable with your library living in Google's cloud and needing a connection to search it. If you would rather keep your photos on your own disk and still get an instant “more like this” result, a local tool that runs the AI on your machine gives you the same convenience without the upload. Either way, the trick is the same: let the software find the matches so you are not scrolling for them.