How to Stop Remembering Memories You Don’t Want to Be Reminded of

Last year, on a perfect spring day that also happened to be my birthday, I took a road trip to a beautiful area of ​​New York State. It was a beautiful day. The new leaves were just emerging and flocks of migratory birds flew overhead – just the right day for lots of photos and fond memories.

Unfortunately, my reason for traveling north was not to see the flora and fauna, but to attend my best friend’s funeral. I took many photos that day: of other friends attending the service, of the river paths and local parks my best friend and I walked together, and of the house she used to live in with her parents, now empty is. I took all these photos because I knew it was probably the last time I would visit this place.

And a year later, as expected, Google popped up in my notifications with an invitation to revisit the “wonderful” memories of that day. It wasn’t something I needed or wanted to remember, especially not a snappy memory that assumed I had a wonderful time and wanted to share all those exciting memories with all my friends.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who finds these pop-ups less of a joy and more of an emotional arrow to the heart.

Of course, you can avoid these notifications by simply withdrawing from the internet or muting all your notifications. However, if you have friends you want to stay in touch with or notifications that are important to you, this won’t work. Furthermore, you can How Some of these reminder reminders will appear, but not all. What if, for example, you just wanted to avoid photos of your ex or the trip where you made a complete fool of yourself?

Perhaps because of all the complaints, some of the more serious offenders – Google Photos, Apple Photos, Facebook and Microsoft OneDrive – have ways you can prevent them from showing up. Depending on the app, you can adjust your settings to avoid certain storage notifications – or stop them altogether.

Here’s how to curb unwanted reminders from these four apps.

You can tweak the Memories feature in Google Photos to stop specific groups of photos or stop them altogether. The process differs depending on whether you are using a desktop or mobile app.

(Yes, it would be nice if Google’s latest AI feature – whatever they want to call it – could do this for you with a single request, but as with so many other things, AI isn’t quite there yet.)

• Go to Settings (the gear in the top right corner) and scroll down to Memories.
• If there is a specific date you don’t want to be reminded of (or several specific dates), select Hide appointments > Add appointments and add the date (or date range) you want to avoid.
• If you don’t want to be reminded of a specific person or pet, select Off. Hide people and pets. You will see a collection of all the faces that Photos has found in your images. Click on one you don’t want to see. It will be grayed out and given a “Do Not See” icon. Click it again if you want to restore it.
• If you don’t want pop-up saves at all, disable them Time-based reminders And Thematic memories.

• Tap your personal icon (in the top right corner) and Photo Settings > Preferences.
• Choose Memories.
• Choose Hide people or Hide appointments to stop memories of specific people or dates. (These work in the same way as the Hide feature in the desktop app.)
• To disable pop-up saves, select Notifications and deactivate Time-based reminders or Thematic memories.

If you use the Apple Photos iPhone app, there are several ways to reduce or prevent unwanted people or events from appearing using the app’s Reminders features.

To control how often you see a specific person, pet, or other content:

• In the photos In the app, find a picture of the person you don’t want to be reminded of.
• Tap the three dots in the top right corner and select Introduce this person less.
• Choose Introduce this person less or Never introduce this person.

If you want certain content to appear less frequently:

• Go to For her Tab in Apple photosselect a reminder and tap the three dots in the top right corner.
• Tap on Fewer features and then Confirm.

If you’re one of those people who finds it irritating to be bombarded with holiday photos (and believe me, I understand that), then you can specifically prevent them in your main settings:

• In Settingschoose photos.
• Scroll down to View holiday events and turn it off.

And as long as you’re there – if you want to switch off Memories total on your iPhone (which will also be cut off). Selected photos):

• Go to Settings > Photos.
• Scroll down to Show recommended content and turn it off.

Yes, I know – it’s Facebook. But it’s also where a lot of your relatives are, so it’s hard to let go. But you don’t have to constantly be reminded of things you don’t want to be reminded of.

• Select from the side menu Reminders > Notifications.
• If you want to stop reminders entirely, choose None under Notifications.
• If you want to stop reminders of specific people or dates or using keywords, go to Hide memories further down the page and select the appropriate category.

• Tap your personal icon in the top right and select it Memories.
• Choose Settings (gear) icon.
• If you want to stop reminders entirely, choose None under Notifications.
• If you want to stop reminders of specific people or dates, or use keywords, search Hide memories further down the page and select the appropriate category.

Microsoft doesn’t want to be left behind and offers OneDrive Memories. Luckily, it’s easy to turn off.

• You can go directly to OneDrive Notifications option by going to this link; otherwise, if you are using the website, click on the gear in the top right corner and go to Options > Notifications.
• Several choices will appear Email me when. Uncheck the box next to There are memories on this day.

• Tap on the mobile app Me (Your personal icon in the bottom right corner). Settings > Notifications.
• You can then turn off notifications for On this day And Memories from last month.