How to blur faces in a photo on iPhone

How to blur a face in a photo on iPhone with Safari

1. 1

   Choose the photo

   Open this page in Safari and tap Choose photo, then Photo Library, and pick the picture. HEIC photos straight from the camera open in Safari.

2. 2

   Let it find the faces

   Faces are found on your iPhone as soon as the photo opens, and each one is covered with a blurred oval. Tap that person’s picture under Faces, or their oval on the photo, and turn off Hide this face to leave them visible.

3. 3

   Check every face

   Look over every face. If one was missed, drag on the photo to draw a box over it. Raise Blur strength until no one is recognisable.

4. 4

   Save to Photos

   Tap Export photo, then Share or save to Photos and Save Image. The blurred copy appears in your library next to the original.

Cover a face with Markup in the Photos app

Markup is Apple’s drawing tool, built into Photos. Open the photo, tap Edit, then the Markup button (a pen tip). Tap the plus button to add a shape, choose a square or circle, drag it over the face, and use the shape’s fill option to make it solid. You can also scribble over a face with the pen at full opacity.

It covers rather than blurs, so the result looks like a sticker over the picture, and placing shapes accurately on a small screen takes a few attempts. It works on any iPhone and saves into the same photo (you can revert the edit later).

Hide a face with Clean Up

On iPhones that support Apple Intelligence, the Photos editor has a Clean Up tool for removing distractions. If you brush over a person’s face with it, Photos can obscure the face with a pixelated pattern instead of trying to erase it. Apple describes this as a way to hide someone’s identity in a photo.

It only appears on compatible models with Apple Intelligence turned on, and the result is a fixed mosaic you cannot adjust. If you don’t see Clean Up when you edit a photo, your iPhone doesn’t offer it.

Blur faces in Safari instead

The editor on this page runs in Safari like any web page, and everything happens on the phone: the face detector downloads once (about 3 MB) and the photo is never uploaded. It finds every face in the picture, which saves placing shapes by hand in a group photo.

You also get a choice of look. Blur is the default here; Pixelate gives the mosaic effect and Black a solid cover, and each face can be set separately under Look for this area. For something that is not a face, choose Part of the photo and draw a box, or switch Draw with to Brush and paint over it.

HEIC photos, large photos and where the copy goes

iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. Safari opens them directly, and other browsers convert them on your device first, so you can leave the camera on its default setting.

Safari on iPhone limits the size of a canvas to about 16.7 megapixels. A standard 12-megapixel photo is saved at full size; the 24- and 48-megapixel shots from newer Pro models are saved at the largest size Safari allows, which is still more than any social site keeps.

Share or save to Photos puts the copy in your library. Download photo saves it to the Downloads folder in the Files app instead. The saved copy carries no location or camera details. To blur a clip rather than a still, see blurring a video on iPhone.