Photos is designed to 'reward curiosity and additional clicks with ever more granular manipulation capabilities'. Photos tucks complex editing tools into several simple controls by default.

Starting in version 5.0 (released in 2019 with macOS 10.15 Catalina), photos can instead be browsed by year, month, or day.

Through version 4.0 (released with macOS 10.14 Mojave) the Photos app organized photos by 'moment', as determined using combination of the time and location metadata attached to the photo. Photos is intended to be less complex than its professional predecessor, Aperture. On September 13, 2016, the app was later included in tvOS 10. Photos was included with OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, released as a free update to users on April 8, 2015. In June 2014, Apple announced its plan to discontinue the applications iPhoto and Aperture, to be replaced by a new application, Photos, at some point in 2015.