You have a photo on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and you want to remove its background without buying an app. Apple already builds this into Photos, Preview, and the Finder, and a browser tool covers the jobs those skip.

The short answer

On a Mac, open the photo in Photos, Control-click it, and choose Copy Subject. On macOS Tahoe 26 or later, Preview’s Remove Background button makes a PNG without the background. On iPhone or iPad, touch and hold the subject, then tap Copy. For white, an exact color, a JPG, or a square, use Backgrounds Remover in your browser.

On a Mac: Copy Subject in Photos

Photos has lifted subjects since macOS Ventura: the Ventura edition of Apple’s page on isolating a photo’s subject in Photos says it works “in macOS Ventura or later.” The current guide to isolating and sharing a photo’s subject on Mac gives these steps:

  1. Open a photo in the Photos app.
  2. Control-click the photo.
  3. Choose Copy Subject to copy just the subject with the background removed, then paste it into a document, email, message, or note. Or choose Share Subject to send it in a text, an email, and more.

Share Subject appears in Apple’s guide from macOS Sequoia 15; the Ventura and Sonoma editions list Copy Subject only. The feature also works in Safari, Quick Look, Mail, and more, according to the same page, so you can lift a subject from an image on a web page or in a Quick Look preview.

Copy Subject puts the cutout on the clipboard, not in a file. To keep it as a file, open Preview and choose File > New from Clipboard, the command Apple’s guide to annotating an image in Preview uses to turn a copied selection into a new file. Save it as a PNG, since a JPEG has no transparency, and check that the background stayed transparent.

On a Mac: Preview and the Finder

Newer versions of macOS also remove a background from an image file directly, without the clipboard.

Preview. Apple’s guide to removing a background in Preview on Mac, in its macOS Tahoe 26 and later editions, describes a one-click button:

  1. Open the image in Preview.
  2. Click the Remove Background button.
  3. If Preview asks whether to convert the document to a PNG file, click Convert to change the original, or click Cancel and choose File > Duplicate to work on a copy.

To undo it, choose Edit > Undo. The macOS Sequoia 15 edition of the same page has no such button. It describes the Instant Alpha tool instead, for a background made of “areas that are mainly the same color”: show the Markup toolbar, click Instant Alpha, drag over the background, and press Delete. On a busy background, that edition’s Smart Lasso lets you trace the subject and copy it.

Finder. Control-click an image file in the Finder and choose Quick Actions. Apple’s guide to quick actions in the Finder for macOS 27 lists Remove Background under More. In the macOS Sequoia 15 and Tahoe 26 editions, Remove Background is a Finder extension you turn on through Customize first. The page does not say what file the action creates, so look in the folder afterwards.

None of these pages says where the cutout is computed, so we make no claim either way.

On iPhone and iPad

Apple’s guide to lifting a subject from the photo background on iPhone says it works in Photos, Safari, Quick Look, and more:

  1. Open a photo in full screen, or pause a video on any frame.
  2. Touch and hold the subject until an outline appears.
  3. Tap Copy (or Copy Subject) and paste the subject into an email, a message, or a note. You can also tap Share to send it with AirDrop or Mail, tap Add Sticker, or keep holding and drag the subject into another app with a second finger.

The iOS 16 edition of that page links to its list of supported models: iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone SE (2nd generation), and later. Apple’s page on lifting a subject on iPad gives the same steps and notes that iPad (8th generation) is not supported.

Preview on iPhone and iPad. From the iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 editions of its guides onward, Apple describes a Remove Background command in the Preview app. Following the guide to editing an image in Preview on iPhone, open the image in Preview, tap the More button, then tap Remove Background. The option appears only when Preview detects a subject, such as a person, an animal, or an object. The iPad steps are the same.

You may also read about a Remove Background quick action in the Files app. The Files pages in Apple’s iPhone User Guide do not describe one, so we give no steps for it here.

When a browser tool fits better

Apple’s tools are free and already on your device, so start there if they give you what you need. A browser tool is the better fit in a few specific situations:

  • You need a new background, not only a cutout. Apple’s pages describe removing the background, not replacing it. Backgrounds Remover can put the subject on white or on an exact hex color, and switching between transparent, white, and a color is instant because the AI model does not run again. The guide to changing a photo’s background color covers brand colors and contrast.
  • You need a JPG or a square. On white or a color, you can download a smaller JPG instead of a PNG. The Size option adds Square, 1080 x 1080, and 2048 x 2048, cropped to the subject with a small margin (a fixed size larger than the subject is enlarged and can look soft), which suits product photos on a white background and profile pictures.
  • Your Mac lacks the newer tools. Preview’s one-click button appears in Apple’s guide from macOS Tahoe 26, and before that Instant Alpha suits backgrounds of mostly one color. A work Mac where you cannot install apps or update macOS has the same gap. The browser tool needs no install.
  • You want one workflow on every computer. The same page runs the same AI model on a Mac, a Windows PC, Linux, or a Chromebook, which helps a team that mixes systems. On the engine builds we test, the cutouts agree within the tolerances listed on how we test the cutouts; Safari itself and real Macs and Windows PCs have not been tested yet (step 1 below). On a PC, see removing a background on Windows with Paint or Photos.
  • You need to know where the photo goes. Backgrounds Remover decodes and processes the image on your device and never uploads it. How on-device background removal works explains each step.

Remove a background in your browser

  1. Open the background remover in an up-to-date browser. Our automated browser test runs in Chromium (the open-source core of Chrome) on every change, and it also passed in Firefox and WebKit, the engine Safari is built on, when we ran it by hand on Linux on September 27, 2026. Safari itself and real Macs, iPhones, and iPads have not been tested yet: current browsers with WebAssembly should work, but we have not measured them.
  2. Drop the photo on the page, choose it, or paste it with Command-V. JPEG, PNG, and WebP work, and usually AVIF, GIF, and BMP too.
  3. The first time, the browser downloads the AI model (about 176 MB) and caches it, so later photos in the same visit, and later visits while the browser keeps it, skip that download.
  4. Wait for the cutout. The engine runs in WebAssembly and uses your graphics card through WebGPU (the browser’s interface to it) when the browser makes one available; otherwise it runs on your processor, with one thread per logical core when the browser allows threads.
  5. Pick Transparent, White, or Color. For White or Color, you can also choose PNG or the smaller JPG.
  6. Under Size, keep Original or pick Square, 1080 x 1080, or 2048 x 2048.
  7. Select Download PNG, or Download JPG if you chose it.

The illustrated guide to using Backgrounds Remover shows each screen and the messages you may see. In our tests on September 17, 2026, a studio portrait kept clean hair edges, with a little background left next to a large dark object at the edge of the frame, and a flat logo on white came out clean, including the gaps enclosed inside the mark.

HEIC photos. iPhone and iPad can save photos in the space-saving HEIF format (.heic files). The page’s file chooser lists JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, and BMP, so a .heic file may be grayed out there; dropping it on the page works only if your browser can decode it. If the file cannot be chosen, or the page says “This file could not be opened as an image,” convert the photo first: Apple’s guide to HEIF and HEVC media says to open it in Photos or Preview on a Mac, choose File > Export, and pick JPEG or PNG. The Finder’s Convert Image quick action does the same; Apple’s Finder quick actions guide uses an iPhone .heic photo as its example. To shoot new photos as JPEG, set Settings > Camera > Formats to Most Compatible.

On an iPhone or iPad. Tap the drop area to choose a photo. For a quick cutout on a phone, try Apple’s touch and hold first: the browser tool downloads a 176 MB model with the first photo, may run out of memory on a phone, and has not been tested on real phones yet.

Limits to know

  • Memory matters most on iPhone and iPad. In our measurement in desktop Chromium on a computer with 4 virtual CPUs, the browser tab used about 1.2 GB of memory for a typical photo and up to about 1.6 GB for a 16-megapixel photo, so a phone or tablet with little free memory may fail.
  • The first photo downloads the AI model, about 176 MB, and it downloads again if the browser has cleared it, so plan that for Wi-Fi if your connection is slow or metered.

Other limits are the same on every system: the model keeps one main subject, fine hair can come out imperfect, and images above 16 megapixels are scaled down. How on-device background removal works lists them all. If an edge needs a manual fix, see how to fix halos and rough edges.

Which one should you use?

To drop a subject into a message, a note, or a document, use Copy Subject in Photos on a Mac, or touch and hold on iPhone or iPad. To remove the background from an image file, use Preview: the Remove Background button on macOS Tahoe 26 or later, or the More menu on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 or later. If you need the subject on white or an exact color, a JPG, a square size, or one workflow that also works on a Windows PC, remove a background in your browser.