Star meanings and Photos favorites

Give each star rating your own short meaning in Settings. Frames starts with these descriptions: one star is a photograph worth keeping for documentary value but not publishing; two stars need work; three stars are quite good with little work left; four stars are ready to share publicly; five stars belong in a gallery or portfolio. Edit any line to fit your practice. Rating controls show the meanings as hints, and the five descriptions sync with your other Frames devices when decision sync is on.

Automatically favorite in Apple Photos is off until you enable it. Its threshold starts at 4 stars or higher and can be set to any rating from one to five. Decision sync must be on; the switch and threshold then sync with your Frames devices. A Mac running Frames makes the Photos changes, including for ratings entered on iPhone or iPad after they sync. When a Photos photograph reaches the threshold, Frames adds it to Photos favorites; when its Frames rating drops below the threshold, Frames removes the favorite only if Frames added it. A favorite already present in Photos is never claimed or removed by this rule. If you remove an automatic favorite in Photos, Frames respects that choice until you next change its rating in Frames. At that point the rating rule applies again. The favorite bit itself can travel through iCloud Photos when that service is enabled.

After enabling the rule or changing the threshold, Frames asks whether to update existing rated Photos photographs. Accepting runs the update in the background with progress in Activity. Declining applies the rule only to future rating changes. Turning the switch off leaves every existing Photos favorite as it is.