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A few months ago I was using my Surface 3 and all of a sudden the photos app popped up the following notification:

Saturday evening in Winfield
Check out the new photo album we created for you!

I clicked on it and it was an album consisting of a pretty random collection of photos I had taken (on my previous surface 2) over a year ago. They were all taken at the same time and place, but it didn't include all of the photos taken then.

Since then this notification has been popping up constantly, every 2 or 3 days it comes up again. It's always the same album, same notification, etc.

So why on earth did photos randomly decide to automatically make a photo album of a bunch of random pictures from over a year ago and feel the need to continually remind me of it?

Note: I know how do disable notifications for the app etc. I'm asking why it does this.

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  • 1
    How do you disable the notifications? This feature is driving me insane. It gives me 3-5 notifications every day about the same album.
    – user45623
    Aug 26, 2016 at 18:21
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    @user45623 Right click on the notification and choose disable notifications from the app.
    – PGmath
    Aug 26, 2016 at 21:49
  • Now I feel silly for not trying that. Thanks!
    – user45623
    Aug 26, 2016 at 23:49

2 Answers 2

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+50

The automatic album creation is a new feature:

The Photos app creates albums for you from groups of related photos.

(Source: Microsoft documentation.) It didn't add all the photos taken on that date because it thought some were too similar to others:

Not all of the related photos will be in each album. If you have several similar photos, it’ll select what looks like the best one.

Date and time are definitely taken into account when grouping the photos; a CNET article suggests there might be more complex logic too:

Here, you'll find albums that the Photos app creates for you automatically, based on date taken, location, and possibly facial recognition (people in the photos).

The location would be determined from information embedded in the picture by the device that took it.

Concerning the uninvited appearance of the app: That seems to be a bug experienced by many people with the management of Universal app processes. For some, it's caused by a certain version of DisplayFusion.

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  • The two complaints you linked are similar (and probably related) to, but not the same thing as, my experience. For me the whole app doesn't open (like for those users), it just keeps popping this same stupid notification. That's what puzzles me the most, it hasn't created any new albums, it just keeps reminding me every couple days of the same year-old album.
    – PGmath
    Apr 18, 2016 at 2:52
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    Do you know how to disable this awful 'feature'?
    – user45623
    Aug 26, 2016 at 18:42
  • @user45623 Unfortunately, I don't. I couldn't find a setting that stops it, and there don't seem to be any relevant Group Policy options either.
    – Ben N
    Aug 26, 2016 at 18:50
  • As noted by PGMath above, you just right-click the notification and can disable notifications from that app from there.
    – user45623
    Aug 26, 2016 at 23:50
  • @user45623 Ah, excellent. (I hadn't seen one recently so I couldn't check it.)
    – Ben N
    Aug 26, 2016 at 23:51
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To make this feature work, Microsoft uploads all you images to their servers (then their AI chooses the best looking ones), so it's highly recommended to remove this app rather than just ignoring it's notifications.

Go to PowerShell (run as Administrator), and enter:

Get-AppxPackage *photo* | Remove-AppxPackage
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