Face swap for group photos
Someone always blinks.
The best smile lands in shot two, the open eyes in shot four; the photo you wanted is spread across five files. Best Expression is a face swap extension inside Apple Photos on iPhone, iPad, and Mac: pick the blinked face, borrow that person's better take from a shot seconds away, and save the photo you meant to take. Every pixel comes from your own shots. Nothing leaves your device.
One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- System
- iOS 17, macOS 14, or later
- Chip
- Apple silicon
- Lives in
- Photos → Edit → •••
- Network code
- None
- Price
- Once, for every platform.
How it works
Open the shot
Any photo already in your library. In Photos: Edit, then the ••• button, then Best Expression. On a Mac, launch the app once and the extension registers itself; on iPhone and iPad it appears under Extensions as soon as the app is installed.
Pick a face
Every face gets an outline. Tap or click one and the extension finds that person's other takes in shots from the same moment, scores them for sharpness, open eyes and smile, and lines them up best first. Frames inside Live Photos count too.
Pick the take
One tap or click blends it in: the face is fitted, the colors are matched, and the settings tune themselves in about a second. Nudge the sliders if you want. Saving writes a full-quality edit that Revert to Original can always undo.
Before, after
The blend
A pasted-on face is easy to spot, so most of the work went into the part where you can't tell. Every pixel still comes from your own shots; nothing is invented.
- Fit The new face is reshaped to sit exactly where the old one sat, jawline and all.
- Blend Color and light are matched to the rest of the photo, so no edge or tone shift gives it away.
- Hair Hairlines stay untouched on both people. A wrong hairline is what ruins most face swaps.
- Bursts Shots taken seconds apart can swap the whole head, hair and glasses included, with the background left alone.
- Check The extension grades its own result and keeps adjusting until the swap blends in. The sliders stay there if you want the last word.
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Eyes only, or smile only. Less change reads as more real.
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Tweak Face. Smile and eye-openness sliders for any single photo, no reference shot needed.
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Search window: 30 seconds out to 6 hours. Or hand-pick from the library.
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Press and hold adds a face the detector missed; on a Mac, right-click works too.
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Saves at full resolution. EXIF, GPS and capture date ride along.
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Live Photos get mined for extra takes; only the sharp frames survive.
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Sessions survive. Re-open an edited photo and every swap is still adjustable.
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Hold Compare to flash the original. Double-tap or double-click to zoom, up to 6×.
Privacy
Your photos stay home.
No network code
Best Expression makes no network connections. No analytics, no crash reporting, no account, no subscription. The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected because there is nothing to collect.
ML, kept on a leash
Machine learning does exactly one job here: finding faces and their landmarks, on your device. Every pixel in a result comes from your own photos.
Reversible, always
Edits save non-destructively through the Photos extension system. Revert to Original restores the untouched shot, even months later.
The whole policy fits on a postcard. Read it.
Questions
What does a swap need?
At least one other photo of the same person taken close in time. A burst of photos or two consecutive shots works best, and it covers closed eyes, half-blinks and missed smiles alike. The Tweak Face sliders are the exception: they work on any single photo with a face in it.
Can it open fully closed eyes without another shot?
No. The sliders reshape the face's own pixels and they stop at subtle. Fully closed eyes need a real take to borrow from. Nothing here invents an eyeball.
What happens with Live Photos?
Two things. Their video frames serve as extra takes, filtered down to the sharp ones. And when you save an edit over a Live Photo, Photos keeps the edited still and switches off the motion, as it does for every third-party editor. Duplicate the photo first if you want a live copy too. Revert to Original brings the motion back.
Where does it show up?
In Photos: Edit, then the ••• button, then Best Expression. On a Mac, launch the app once after installing; on iPhone and iPad the extension sits under Extensions in the same menu.
Missing from the menu? On a Mac: System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Photos Editing, switch it on, restart Photos. On iPhone and iPad: keep the app installed and reopen Photos. The support page walks through it.
What does it cost?
One price, paid once. No subscription, no tiers, no account. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The current number is on the App Store listing.
Which devices?
iPhone and iPad on iOS or iPadOS 17 or later, and Apple silicon Macs on macOS 14 or later. The pipeline leans on Core Image and the Neural Engine, so it stays quick on full-resolution photos.
The good take is already in your library.
One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac.