How to search for Categories with Smart Albums

Written for Photos on macOS 13 Ventura, in response to this discussion: Smart Album from "Categories" in Photos - Apple Community

The search in Photos is very powerful. Using the search field, we can search for Live Text, places, categories. But it is only a one-shot result. We cannot save the search for later use. We need a smart album to be able to repeat the same search later again. But when we try to set up a smart album to search for categories, like "Bear", "Christmas Tree", etc, there is no specific rule for categories.

I suggest to use the "Text" rule instead. Any string we enter in a text rule for a smart album will find any text associated with a photo, categories, Live Text, titles, captions, locations, etc.

The text rule is not specific for categories, but will include the photos matching the categories - for example, searching for pictures showing elephants:

Use the command "File > New Smart Album ⌥⌘N" to create a new smart album. Then set the selector for the Rule to "Text" and enter the search string: