How to Make the iOS 18 Photos App Suck Less

[mosesvii]

I haven't met one person that is pleased with the new photos app.

I don’t get the hate for it. I like it a lot. Way more than what it used to be 🤷‍♂️

 

[bpb]

Give me back my scrub bar for videos. Pretty please?

Scrubbing videos works just fine for me. Just tap and drag on the "progress" bar under the playing video. Second gen iPhone SE.

 

[bpb]

As the owner of both Android and iOS devices (iPhones forever, iPads, Macbooks etc etc), it amazes me how much simpler Android/Google have become and how complex iOS now is.

If I look at Google Photos, I have 3 simple options in Photos: "Photos - Collections - Search" - that's it. When I open my photos app, I see my photo library, not a barf of random garbage that I have to navigate through just to see my latest photos.

I'm not sure what's up with your phone but on mine "my latest photos" is literally the *first* thing I see when I open the photos app. It opens with all of my photos at the top,sorted in reverse chronological order, with the latest ones in view. If I want to see earlier ones I scroll up. I've not done any customization. What is it that you see when you open the photos app?

 

[bpb]

Haven't installed v18 yet. Is there really no way to scrub through videos anymore?

No. There *definitely* is a way to scrub through videos. I have no idea what that poster is talking about.

 

[bpb]

And why would you locate access to passwords four levels removed from the home screen?

iOS18 is worse than Windows.

What are you talking about? I just drag down my home screen to get search, type "Pass" and bingo.. there's my passwords. If I want, I could have it on any of my various home screen pages but I use it so infrequently as a stand-alone that i just leave it to quick search. Easy peasy.

 

[bpb]

Bring back the "Places" album so I can visually search by exact location and sort by date. How do people who travel all over the world manage the new Photos?

The "Map" Pinned Collection seems functionally equivalent to the old "Places" map view, at least to my eyes.

 

[bpb]

Immutable characteristics, I'm not following...

It's a racist dog whistle. Pay it no mind. Bigots gotta bigot.

 

[bpb]

You did not understand my feature return request. I used to go to Places, it would show on a map of the world where my photos were taken, and I would zoom in to the one I wanted or the area I wanted to see

Just tap on "Map" in "Pinned Collections". Easy peasy.

 

[bpb]

Also, let me give you just one example of an unbelievably bad design decision.

Library scroll is at the top. It’s always there. That’s not customizable in the “Customize & Reorder” section.

In principle, those things that ARE in Customize and Reorder have use for some people at some times, right? Your photos are the “data” in them (quite literally via the metadata).

In this example, let’s say you scroll back 1000 photos to find an event/subject/whatever that you’re looking for. You find it.

You think a photo is a good candidate for possibly 3 albums, but you’d need to look at what else is in the albums to decide.

Your only way to do that is to hit the “X” at the bottom right to snap you all the way down to the bottom of the list (by default, your most recent photos) so that the Customize & Reorder shows up. And then you’d need to scroll all the way back up those 1000 photos to get to the one you were looking for. Possibly many times if you’re wanting to do a simple thing with many photos as you’re, say, a passenger in a car.

That’s bad design. I can think of at least 2 other approaches that are better and take into account variation in phone screen sizes.

So help me God if someone comes along here and says “you shouldn’t be organizing photos on your phone” or “you should be using tags instead of albums” or “that’s what Photos on your Mac is for” or any terrible “you’re using it wrong” excuses like that for the kind of operation that the UI ostensibly intends to do. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have the option to assign a photo to an album in the first place.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. You've confused "doesn't have a very specific feature and workflow that I specifically want and I know exactly how this should work" with "Bad design".

 

[spazzcat]

What are you talking about? I just drag down my home screen to get search, type "Pass" and bingo.. there's my passwords. If I want, I could have it on any of my various home screen pages but I use it so infrequently as a stand-alone that i just leave it to quick search. Easy peasy.

I pretty much never look for apps anymore; searching is much faster.

 

[john123]

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. You've confused "doesn't have a very specific feature and workflow that I specifically want and I know exactly how this should work" with "Bad design".

Um.

What I described wasn't a "feature." It's execution of an existing supported feature. It is not a "workflow." That's a word with a very specific definition.

Let's go through this, shall we?

1. The high level user story is, written in an overly reductionist way, "As a Photos user, I want to be able to add photos to albums on my iOS device."
2. Given that adding photos to an album is one of only a handful of supported features, then we can infer that the top-level use case I described in my previous post is (a) valid and (b) important. It's inherent to the design. (Why? You obviously can't decide whether or not to add a photo to an album without seeing the photo itself first. This is where the "user story" and "use case" distinction can get blurred here — but in this particular case, they have to be one and the same.)
3. It is always implicitly assumed for any and all product use cases that the actor is able to make an informed or at least sufficiently informed decision about their action. I'd call this principle axiomatic.
4. I think it would be hard to argue that the information deficit created by the issue that I mentioned is negligible. The "X" button is programmed to, effectively, do three things with one press: (1) exit you from the current photo, (2) snap you to the bottom of the photos view, and (3) send you to the area immediately below Recent Photos where Albums and the other sections exist. But those three things are not inherently interrelated. There's no way in a million years someone drew it up with those three boxes that way on a wireframe.
5. If you think you can make that argument without resorting to the types of excuses bad PMs make that I mentioned at the end of my post, by all means — please do so.
6. Rather hilariously, Apple has its own guidance about use of context menus. So if you choose not to believe me about principles of design and product and want to believe Apple, go for it! Apply the principles in this doc to Photos and score it. No, seriously, do it.

And for the record, this design issue isn't something I care about. You seemed to imply that I mentioned it because it bothers me. Personally, I'd never do album organization on my phone. It is, however, something that caught my eye — as someone who has, you know, done this for a living for large software companies — as strikingly poor execution of an intended use case.

Lastly, when people argue about design things being "opinions," I have to shake my head. Sometimes, sure. But there are principles that are considered nearly universal. And they've been around for a long time. A few foundational books are:

1. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
2. Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
3. Inspired by Marty Cagan (if you think the first two books are antiquated or don't apply to software design, you're wrong, so go read this or anything else Marty has written and find out why they're perfectly applicable to software. If you're a Marty hater...well, as Ricky Bobby said, if you don't chew Big Red, then...)

(Edits: a ton because this is fun for me. Clarifying my "use case" / "user story" narrative logic; added the link to Apple's own guidance on context menus; added the third result of the "X" button; added reading materials; took out the sanctimonious intro snark but still believe it was correct)

 

[bpb]

Um.

What I described wasn't a "feature." It's execution of an existing supported feature. It is not a "workflow." That's a word with a very specific definition.

Let's go through this, shall we?

1. The high level user story is, written in an overly reductionist way, "As a Photos user, I want to be able to add photos to albums on my iOS device."
2. Given that adding photos to an album is one of only a handful of supported features, then we can infer that the top-level use case I described in my previous post is (a) valid and (b) important. It's inherent to the design. (Why? You obviously can't decide whether or not to add a photo to an album without seeing the photo itself first. This is where the "user story" and "use case" distinction can get blurred here — but in this particular case, they have to be one and the same.)
3. It is always implicitly assumed for any and all product use cases that the actor is able to make an informed or at least sufficiently informed decision about their action. I'd call this principle axiomatic.
4. I think it would be hard to argue that the information deficit created by the issue that I mentioned is negligible. The "X" button is programmed to, effectively, do three things with one press: (1) exit you from the current photo, (2) snap you to the bottom of the photos view, and (3) send you to the area immediately below Recent Photos where Albums and the other sections exist. But those three things are not inherently interrelated. There's no way in a million years someone drew it up with those three boxes that way on a wireframe.
5. If you think you can make that argument without resorting to the types of excuses bad PMs make that I mentioned at the end of my post, by all means — please do so.
6. Rather hilariously, Apple has its own guidance about use of context menus. So if you choose not to believe me about principles of design and product and want to believe Apple, go for it! Apply the principles in this doc to Photos and score it. No, seriously, do it.

And for the record, this design issue isn't something I care about. You seemed to imply that I mentioned it because it bothers me. Personally, I'd never do album organization on my phone. It is, however, something that caught my eye — as someone who has, you know, done this for a living for large software companies — as strikingly poor execution of an intended use case.

Lastly, when people argue about design things being "opinions," I have to shake my head. Sometimes, sure. But there are principles that are considered nearly universal. And they've been around for a long time. A few foundational books are:

1. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
2. Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
3. Inspired by Marty Cagan (if you think the first two books are antiquated or don't apply to software design, you're wrong, so go read this or anything else Marty has written and find out why they're perfectly applicable to software. If you're a Marty hater...well, as Ricky Bobby said, if you don't chew Big Red, then...)

(Edits: a ton because this is fun for me. Clarifying my "use case" / "user story" narrative logic; added the link to Apple's own guidance on context menus; added the third result of the "X" button; added reading materials; took out the sanctimonious intro snark but still believe it was correct)

Jesus christ.. what a load of nonsense. Did this seem like a valid way to spend your time? None of this is objectively true in the least. Have fun in fantasy land.

 

[darngooddesign]

Also, let me give you just one example of an unbelievably bad design decision.

Library scroll is at the top. It’s always there. That’s not customizable in the “Customize & Reorder” section.

In principle, those things that ARE in Customize and Reorder have use for some people at some times, right? Your photos are the “data” in them (quite literally via the metadata).

In this example, let’s say you scroll back 1000 photos to find an event/subject/whatever that you’re looking for. You find it.

You think a photo is a good candidate for possibly 3 albums, but you’d need to look at what else is in the albums to decide.

Your only way to do that is to hit the “X” at the bottom right to snap you all the way down to the bottom of the list (by default, your most recent photos) so that the Customize & Reorder shows up. And then you’d need to scroll all the way back up those 1000 photos to get to the one you were looking for. Possibly many times if you’re wanting to do a simple thing with many photos as you’re, say, a passenger in a car.

That’s bad design. I can think of at least 2 other approaches that are better and take into account variation in phone screen sizes.

So help me God if someone comes along here and says “you shouldn’t be organizing photos on your phone” or “you should be using tags instead of albums” or “that’s what Photos on your Mac is for” or any terrible “you’re using it wrong” excuses like that for the kind of operation that the UI ostensibly intends to do. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have the option to assign a photo to an album in the first place.

I can think of two other approaches which have literally existed for years.

1. Find your photo
2. Long press on your photo
3. Select “Add to album”
4. Select your album (Selecting multiple albums at once would be an improvement)

1. Find your photo
2. Long press on photo and select “Copy”
3. Tap on Album
4. Long press and select “Paste” (Allowing pasting by longpressing on the top level album thumbnail would be an improvement)

I’m sure I could find one or two methods which are easier than what you described.

 

[dakicka]

Not having the thumbnail preview scrubber at the bottom except for edit only mode is horrible. The thin translucent timeline to scroll on is horrible.

Also, even in 18.2 there is still issues with erratic playback of slow mo video not showing the entire length of the video. Often I have to force close and come back into Apple Photos to play back a video and see its entire duration. About 1 out of every 3 times the video only plays a couple of seconds of the video no matter the length. How this is still broken is laughable. Apple is terrible.

 

[Reboo00oot]

For all the folks that don't like the redesign, you're all filing Feedback, right?
(enter this in Safari-- applefeedback:// )

Here's mine, FB14227353. We should all not only be submitting Feedback, but we should try referencing other's Feedback ID #'s, too.

Here's the link for feedback specific to the photos app.

Feedback - Photos

Apple wants to hear from you. Send us your comments and feedback about Photos.

www.apple.com

 

[john123]

I can think of two other approaches which have literally existed for years.

1. Find your photo
2. Long press on your photo
3. Select “Add to album”
4. Select your album (Selecting multiple albums at once would be an improvement)

1. Find your photo
2. Long press on photo and select “Copy”
3. Tap on Album
4. Long press and select “Paste” (Allowing pasting by longpressing on the top level album thumbnail would be an improvement)

I’m sure I could find one or two methods which are easier than what you described.

Sorry, I think my first post may have been unclear about the problem I’m describing.

It’s that a user’s photos are contained in one big long scrollable list. So if you want to make decisions about what album(s) to put them in ***based on information you don’t know off the top of your head about the contents of albums or any of the other 11 categories in Customize and Reorder***, then your only option is to snap-down, find the info, and scroll back up.

So yes, the two things you described both work, and I imagine that’s how most users do it today. No one’s doing the snap-down and scrolling back up more than a couple times. So they’re making decisions with the info they have in their head, plus what they see in the view of adding to albums (the albums, their counts, and their thumbnails).

I’m trying now to play devil’s advocate and put on my Apple PM hat here to come up with a reasonable defense of the current behavior. A PM could reasonably argue, “Sorry John, we believe that what you have is **enough** information to make an informed decision.” I guess as I put myself in their shoes, I can go along with the opinion even if I disagree with it.

But the nudge I’d give to a PM to consider is that since the contextual information would be very useful, especially to someone with lots and lots of albums, can you think of a way to support getting it without adding my “3 Cs” — clutter, confusion, and complexity?

And I think the answer is yes. But I’ll also go along with the idea that I’m wrong there, at least for some users.

Someone could argue that I’m being nit-picky here. Maybe. But when thinking about content within the Photos app, it’d be hard to argue against the idea that the photos themselves are the primary content and that albums, while technically optional, are the secondary content. (Insert disclaimer that yes, I know albums are technically metadata and it could be argued that they aren’t actually content, but c’mon, stop being silly.)

 

[darngooddesign]

Sorry, I think my first post may have been unclear about the problem I’m describing.

It’s that a user’s photos are contained in one big long scrollable list. So if you want to make decisions about what album(s) to put them in ***based on information you don’t know off the top of your head about the contents of albums or any of the other 11 categories in Customize and Reorder***, then your only option is to snap-down, find the info, and scroll back up.

So yes, the two things you described both work, and I imagine that’s how most users do it today. No one’s doing the snap-down and scrolling back up more than a couple times. So they’re making decisions with the info they have in their head, plus what they see in the view of adding to albums (the albums, their counts, and their thumbnails).

I’m trying now to play devil’s advocate and put on my Apple PM hat here to come up with a reasonable defense of the current behavior. A PM could reasonably argue, “Sorry John, we believe that what you have is **enough** information to make an informed decision.” I guess as I put myself in their shoes, I can go along with the opinion even if I disagree with it.

But the nudge I’d give to a PM to consider is that since the contextual information would be very useful, especially to someone with lots and lots of albums, can you think of a way to support getting it without adding my “3 Cs” — clutter, confusion, and complexity?

And I think the answer is yes. But I’ll also go along with the idea that I’m wrong there, at least for some users.

Someone could argue that I’m being nit-picky here. Maybe. But when thinking about content within the Photos app, it’d be hard to argue against the idea that the photos themselves are the primary content and that albums, while technically optional, are the secondary content. (Insert disclaimer that yes, I know albums are technically metadata and it could be argued that they aren’t actually content, but c’mon, stop being silly.)

Seems like once you’ve added your photo to an album, finding it to add to other albums would be pretty easy. No scrolling you library needed.

 

[john123]

Seems like once you’ve added your photo to an album, finding it to add to other albums would be pretty easy. No scrolling you library needed.

I have to say that I'm more than a little surprised that your forums name is "darngooddesign" and you're doubling down here.

Nevertheless, what I'm talking about is not adding "the photo" (singular) to albums (plural). It's about:

1. Getting contextual information about albums (plural) to make decisions; and
2. Potentially putting multiple photos from a session, event, etc. into one or more albums

I get it if you don't think this is something you need. Me either, as I said.

But it's nevertheless a pretty core use case for the litany of reasons I already gave.

It's just bad. I don't know any other way to put it. Ask 100 director-level PMs or designers (who don't work at Apple and don't have strong brand affinity) and I guaran-darn-tee you at least 90% of them will agree that it's at least somewhat problematic. And worst of all, as I also said, it doesn't have to be this way.

PMs glibly closing tickets as "Works for me" is one of the top 5 things they can do to piss me off. Just because it satisfies one person doesn't mean it's not a problem.

 

[Theryesider]

My biggest gripe for years if you move a picture to an album, it should be there and there only, not still in the camera roll.
Probably some reason why not, but it just clutters the whole thing up.

 

[darngooddesign]

My biggest gripe for years if you move a picture to an album, it should be there and there only, not still in the camera roll.
Probably some reason why not, but it just clutters the whole thing up.

The camera roll is your entire photo library. Photos in albums are still in your photo library

 

[kyykesko]

I used to use Photos daily. No more, I can’t stand that piece of garbage. And for me it’s just a case of hating to use it. With my parents it’s a matter of not being able to find anything anymore. They could barely use the old version. They could find the photos they cared about without having to call me constantly. They couldn’t care less about apple-generated “memories” and other force-fed junk.

If someone has ideas for replacement I’m all ears. Can’t work with that.

 

[gank41]

I used the iPhone screen sharing the other day to show my Mom how to “customize” the whole thing. Then she started asking about rolling back to iOS 17. Fun! At least screen sharing works great.

 

[I7guy]

I used the iPhone screen sharing the other day to show my Mom how to “customize” the whole thing. Then she started asking about rolling back to iOS 17. Fun! At least screen sharing works great.

Your mom gets props. My wife wouldn’t know to ask that. Yet she has figured out the photos app.

 

[BuffaloTF]

Scrubbing videos works just fine for me. Just tap and drag on the "progress" bar under the playing video. Second gen iPhone SE.

I mean the visual scrubber where you’ve got a photo timeline to move through.

 

[Rookbird¥]

My biggest issue with Apple and my photos is they don’t make it easy to download and save all the photos I have on the cloud. There are third party programs but the process is cumbersome and prone to errors. Do they do this to force people to upgrade their iCloud account to a higher price point?