How to add captions and descriptions to Google Photos in bulk

In Google Photos, a caption is the description field attached to a photo. Swipe up or open the info panel, type a line, and it saves. That text is searchable, which is the part most people miss: a photo with "Dad's 70th, Lisbon" written on it can be found years later by typing either of those words.

The catch is the same as everywhere else in Google Photos. You can only write one caption at a time.

Why captions are worth the effort

• Google Photos search reads the description field.
• Names of people, places and events that Google cannot recognise become findable.
• Shared albums make more sense to everyone else looking at them.
• Scanned archives get context that would otherwise be lost with the people who remember it.

Adding a caption by hand

1. Open photos.google.com and open a photo.
2. Click the info button, or press the i key.
3. Click "Add a description" and type.
4. Click away to save.
5. Open the next photo and repeat.

How to add captions to Google Photos in bulk with Batch

1. Install Batch for Google Photos from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Open Google Photos in Chrome and click Batch.
3. Select the group that shares a story: an album, a date range, or a manual selection.
4. Choose Description.
5. Type the description you want on every photo in the group, for example "Costa Rica, March 2026".
6. Start the run and leave the tab open. Batch writes the description into each photo through Google Photos itself.

There is also AI Describe, which writes a description per photo based on what is in the picture, when you want individual text rather than one shared line.

What to write

Short and factual beats clever. The description is a search key, not a headline. Event, place, year, and the names of the people who matter will serve you better in ten years than a joke will.

A pattern that works well: one shared description per group, written the same way each time, so searching a place or a year returns the whole set.

FAQ

Are Google Photos captions searchable?

Yes. Text in the description field is indexed by Google Photos search, which is what makes bulk descriptions useful.

Can I change a description later?

Yes. The field can be edited at any time, one photo at a time or across a selection again.

Does a caption change the photo itself?

No. The description is metadata. The image is untouched.

Do captions show in shared albums?

Yes. People viewing the shared album see the description in the photo's info panel.

Captions pair naturally with a cleanup pass. Many people describe an album right after enhancing it in bulk, or as part of the wider bulk editing guide.