I’ve got a screen recording? I swipe through recent photos on my iPad. You can see the date jumps from yesterday to 2022 then back to today. I feel like not siding with “the people” kind of shows desensitisation or aclimitisation (if that’s a word) to all these tech companies that are getting away with things. Microsoft’s new AI will take screen shots ever other second (you can opt out). But does a feature like that really need to exist? Surely, if the Cookie Monster sees the cookies piling up, they might dip their fingers in, even if they say they won’t? Why would a tech company that’s all about data not want a little sniff at your data.
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Apple Releases iOS 17.5.1 With Fix for Reappearing Photos Bug
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”magical db” are you serious? The Photos app on both iOS and macOS uses a database powered by SQLite. Databases are fragile and can get corrupted. Things happen. Apple made changes in 17.5 that repaired the database and/or made the database handling more robust and less fragile. I don’t understand why you think Apple is lying or think everyone is stupid, but they aren’t.
this is not true. maybe stop jumping to incorrect conclusions over a bug that impacted both local and icloud users. this has nothing to do with icloud, however. and there is no reason for apple to apologize in my opinion over a database bug. this isn’t a privacy concern, they are just photos. photos that apple still doesn’t have access to and never did. photos reappearing on your device isn’t a privacy concern, it’d be the same thing if deleted documents made a return on a Mac or Windows PC because of corruption and said corruption being repaired.
this entire thread is respectfully full of people making incorrect statements, claims, and assumptions over a bug they have no idea as to how or why it appeared. but the reddit post that was linked in this thread seems like it might be one of the reasons behind the bug - iPhones freezing and photos failing to be uploaded to the cloud correctly, causing them to be seemingly deleted from the Photos library after a force reboot, which, is, like I said, a form of corruption, which Apple managed to fix in 17.5, causing certain deleted photos to reappear. who knows how long this bug has existed, but if people have had photos recovered going back years, it’s possible that there were always issues with the way Photos handled the database when it came to uploading photos to iCloud if a sudden issue causes an iPhone to freeze or crash, and it likely impacted non-iCloud Photos users in an identical way. this is not a privacy violation if photos somehow reappear. while yes apple should give better reasoning behind the bug, it’s likely that it’d be very difficult for them to explain adequately to non-technical users as to how or what caused the issue in the first place, as it likely involves numerous technical things related to the way Photos works.
yes, yes there is. system-level apps have been tied to the OS since the creation of iOS, and macOS for that matter. a lot of windows apps are tied to the system as well, meaning that they require a an OS-level update to change. and it’s likely that system-level apps adopt new APIs in each new version of iOS and macOS. APIs that, well, for obvious reasons, don’t exist in previous iOS or macOS versions. not to mention that as the majority of Apple’s users update their OS regularly, there’s no reason to untie app updates from the OS. iOS isn’t Android, there’s not really a fragmentation issue, unless you have 7+ year old devices that are no longer receiving iOS or macOS updates. so i see no reason as to why or how apple should somehow untie system app updates from OS updates. it’s not like 17.5.1 is even that big of an update. and it’s likely that another reason why they don’t untie updates for system apps from the OS is likely because that they don’t frequently add new features to existing apps in minor releases of iOS. not to mention the additional burden it would place on apple’s infrastructure, engineering, and QA teams, not to mention the sheer amount of work that would be necessary to untie core apps from the OS. i don’t work for apple so i can’t comment on every single reason why they don’t separate app updates from OS updates, but this is likely a few reasons why.
Reading a lot of comments of people not understanding how delete actually works when it comes to data; nothing is ever truly deleted in data unless you can perfectly overwrite that data, like in windows, macos and Linux it works the same way , when you delete something and that includes emptying the trash bin , it’s not really deleted it is placed with a container that basically marks the files as allowed to overwrite it. UNTIL THAT FILE IS OVERWRITTEN it is never deleted. this is why their are software designed to overwrite deleted files multiple times he’ll even up to 30 times until the binary is basically gone from that data, it’s also the reason why data is usually almost always likely to be retrieved back with data recovery programs. I honestly do believe it was a bug on apples part as from what I read the photos that came back seemed to be of extreme lower quality than its original , so it could just be cached thumbnails in which 17.5 assumed wasn’t deleted so it returned it to photos. Another hint from some users on Reddit was that these images were also on the files app. It really does seem like a bug that these files were never overwritten in which by the magic of “delete” not truly being deleted or overwritten the photos reappeared but in a lower quality; I have worked in data recovery even dead sectors on hard drives can get files back as long as nothing has overwritten it, another true way to delete files that have been deleted at least when it comes to apple would be a full on factory reset. This usually from my experience with older iPhones overwrites all data making it unrecoverable, occasionally you do see that there is data in it but it’s extremely encrypted and by the time someone else or yourself logs in to the phone that is factory reset majority of the data starts getting overwritten leading to the past files basically moot and gone for good
once again a case of someone not understanding what’s going on here. apple does NOT have access to your photos. stop spreading nonsense.
I don't buy the Files app explanation. Here's what I posted to that Reddit thread:
I don't buy the idea of photos being saved twice. Given the names of some of the photos I've seen, the more likely explanation is that previews of the photos were not deleted. The OS makes several previews of photos for quicker display in the Photos app and via the photo picker. These previews are also used to display photos when the user chooses to not store all their photos on their iPhone or iPad.
When photos are deleted from the Photos app, those previews must be deleted as well. It's likely that they weren't, and that's the database issue. If you look inside the Photos library on a Mac, you'll see these previews in /resources/renders. They have file names like this:
1A0A844D-30CD-4BE7-ADE1-4FD8C3F7C384_1_201_a.jpeg
My guess is that the bug fix did a check of the database and deleted all the previews that were left behind.
I don't buy the idea of photos being saved twice. Given the names of some of the photos I've seen, the more likely explanation is that previews of the photos were not deleted. The OS makes several previews of photos for quicker display in the Photos app and via the photo picker. These previews are also used to display photos when the user chooses to not store all their photos on their iPhone or iPad.
When photos are deleted from the Photos app, those previews must be deleted as well. It's likely that they weren't, and that's the database issue. If you look inside the Photos library on a Mac, you'll see these previews in /resources/renders. They have file names like this:
1A0A844D-30CD-4BE7-ADE1-4FD8C3F7C384_1_201_a.jpeg
My guess is that the bug fix did a check of the database and deleted all the previews that were left behind.
iOS & iPadOS 17.5 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation
Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes.
About the security content of iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 - Apple Support
This document describes the security content of iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5.
Because Apple is evasive, vague, and treats customers as they have an IQ no higher than room temperature. But actually, it’s not their IQ. It‘s a lack of common sense.
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Sure, but in several cases, people were referring to images that they had deleted on *older* iPhones prior to upgrading to a new model.
You're gonna tell me that when migrating database from one iPhone to another, it's gonna copy data marked as "deleted" as well? What would be the purpose of doing that?
So yeah, thats basically what I believe that happened in my case.
Corrupted file was moved over to new device and restored on Both of my devices
Show proof that it was older phones I’ve been doing data recovery for many years and know it’s not possible unless there was a bad sector but the issue is if there was a bad sector it would never recover until it was repaired physically, all the people that said it was affected by this issue non have stated it was from older iPhones and the one person that mentioned selling his phone completely lied about it. Until someone proves an image that was deleted from an old device somehow got it copied to a new one I honestly won’t believe them , I am a main Linux user but I do like my iOS and macOS so I won’t call it my own bias when I worked on many devices and a corrupt file or even a file from a dead sector can come back except from a factory reset
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This is what could happen especially if the phone was not factory reset; also it’s impossible for a factory reset phone then given to another person to retrieve this corrupted data as it would automatically get overwritten
What really floors me is the way the MSM reported this. The photos that were reclaimed were only located on the iPhone. Photos in iCloud when deleted are recoverable for 30 day afterwards. As I pointed out earlier these files are not actually deleted but your deletion instructs iOS to ignore that file, it physically exists until the space it is located on, in the SSD is over written. Back when storage space was much smaller than it is now that happened fairly fast but now with 1 and 2 TB iPhones and iPads it might be a long time before the file is actually over written. So your pictures of naked dogs did not escape your iPhone.
several people have reported that the pictures were deleted on their previous devices
And its these pictures that reappeared on their new devices
I could link several posts on here from reddit & comments on macrumors that confirm this
but surely you’re smart enough to use google
EDIT: obviously they restored from a backup on their new devices although some of them did a direct transfer
Whats notable is that icloud photos didnt play any role in this as most of them didnt use it & had it turned off
More info coming out on what might have caused the issue where "deleted" pics where reappearing...
A highly technical version of the analysis...
INSIDE THE IOS BUG THAT MADE DELETED PHOTOS REAPPEAR
"Based on this code, we can say that the photos that reappeared were still lying around on the filesystems and that they were just found by the migration routine added in iOS 17.5. The reason why those files were there in the first place is unknown."
"CONCLUSION The 17.5.1 update removed the scanning of the filesystem that was added in 17.5 to prevent deleted photos stored outside of the photo library to re-appear. According to our analysis, no code was added to purge the imported photos from the library as well as the "deleted" pictures lying on the filesystem.
Based only on this analysis, it is not possible to conclude how the photos remained on the filesystem in the first place, but this comment on Reddit has some plausible explanations."
- synacktiv, 23 May 2024
A less techical version...
Apple wasn’t storing deleted iOS photos in iCloud after all
- bleepingcomputer, 23 May 2024
A highly technical version of the analysis...
INSIDE THE IOS BUG THAT MADE DELETED PHOTOS REAPPEAR
"Based on this code, we can say that the photos that reappeared were still lying around on the filesystems and that they were just found by the migration routine added in iOS 17.5. The reason why those files were there in the first place is unknown."
"CONCLUSION The 17.5.1 update removed the scanning of the filesystem that was added in 17.5 to prevent deleted photos stored outside of the photo library to re-appear. According to our analysis, no code was added to purge the imported photos from the library as well as the "deleted" pictures lying on the filesystem.
Based only on this analysis, it is not possible to conclude how the photos remained on the filesystem in the first place, but this comment on Reddit has some plausible explanations."
- synacktiv, 23 May 2024
A less techical version...
Apple wasn’t storing deleted iOS photos in iCloud after all
- bleepingcomputer, 23 May 2024
Yeah exactly, like how can you say Apple is pulling some conspiracy when they cant get the basics right, way too much credit to Apple there
idk man, all of these 3rd party explanations are not convincing.
Apple needs to tell us what happened and not some blogger speculation
So that means that everyone’s suspicions about the ”system data” portion of storage was right all along – it’s just stuff Apple should have deleted but whoops. Not all of it, obviously, but it doesn’t have to be that large.
i think it's time to do nand-TRIM specifically for photo files when they are permenantly deleted
no one knows. any answer is speculation and/or anecdotal. apple won't give any details. some ppl have said they have the issue on 17.4 too