iOS 18 Photos App: All the New Features and Design Updates

[whatgift]

The photos changes and the reactions to them are the reason Apple has been so slow to make good usability changes in iOS - this is a much better workflow and organisation, yet people complain because it's not what they're used to (not that's it's harder to use).

The old "change for the sake of change" does NOT apply here, just like it didn't apply when the Safari address bar was moved to the bottom of the screen.

 

[PhilBoogie]

Sigh... I still miss Aperture.

Sigh... I still use Aperture.

 

[timeislove]

Google Phot app has many of these features for a very long time. They initially asked people to sign-up for Google Cloud paid version for Photo App features but later started offering it for free. Google already has mastered the AI and ML (Models) of each and individual user and has already implemented it very well. I think Google also applied some basic level of security where you can’t tag any one in the pictures and name it unless they are someway associated with your group or contact or they have your number in their Android Mobiles.

I am one of the paid member of Google one. I was informed the magic eraser is one of the privileges that paid members can get. While magic eraser should have been opened to non paid users, I do not know the new generative AI assisted object removal tool is too available for non paid users or not.


One major difference between Apple and Google intelligence is that Google uses server level power while Apple insists on on-device logic that Apple said to have better privacy control, which maybe also an excuse for Apple to justify why they are far lagging behind Google in this department.

Having said that, I don’t think on-device logic could in any way compete with the power of sever clusters.

 

[timeislove]

It allows me to quickly scan photos I've made in the past to ones I really liked for exporting to Lightroom. Its ease of use is important.

Rite, then create a bunch of starred albums could do the work for you, I think.

 

[Ramchi]

I am one of the paid member of Google one. I was informed the magic eraser is one of the privileges that paid members can get. While magic eraser should have been opened to non paid users, I do not know the new generative AI assisted object removal tool is too available for non paid users or not.


One major difference between Apple and Google intelligence is that Google uses server level power while Apple insists on on-device logic that Apple said to have better privacy control, which maybe also an excuse for Apple to justify why they are far lagging behind Google in this department.

Having said that, I don’t think on-device logic could in any way compete with the power of sever clusters.

Absolutely agree with you, Apple is generally good at device level features using AI and ML; example Face ID. But when it comes to Cloud and generic AI models stacked and across the spectrums, Apple has that excuse of privacy and hence it becomes almost useless beyond few select and restricted use cases. Any apps that depends on device and user level models, Apple can happily serve but beyond that it will be useless.

 

[PhilipSS]

What a terrible idea. I have over 100K JPEG and RAW files covering the last 15 years that are highly organized across multiple Apple devices. I will not be upgrading any of my Apple devices to version 18 now.

 

[timeislove]

Hey, can I make a general comment about iOS 18?

I mean, the photos app is fine as long as they keep it simple. All this albums, presentations, “this day last year” and that stuff, I don’t care about it and if I could disable it, I would. I want a place to just check the pictures I take, maybe retouch them a bit (trimming, color filters, smart eraser…), and an easy and quick search powered by ML. That’s it.

Okay, now that you cannot flag my comment as off-topic: About iOS 18. I feel like it’s a great update, with lots of new features and enhancements. Maybe the biggest release since iOS 13 or 16, and that’s without taking into the equation Apple Intelligence, because that’s coming with 18.1 and only for the iPhone 15 Pro and newer.

Being such a big release, makes me wonder… what does Apple have in store for iOS 19? And even better AI integration or AI features? Or maybe they will focus on small details and greatly improving the efficiency and performance and bug-fixes, just like iOS 12 did?

Another good approach would be focusing on iPadOS 19 instead, making the needed changes to the operating system to take advantage of more complex workflows, improve Files to make it even closer to Finder, etc.

Tweaking the UI often brings hassles to users rather than features.

Taking photos as a hobby, I prefer Apple to incorporate the ability to group similar photos and blurred photos.

I will much help me managing my photo collection.

 

[timeislove]

Apple still haven't added one simple and long overdue filter: An option to filter out the photos that have not been added to album yet. Kinda like "un-filed photos".

I think, the reason for not including a filter for photos not added to any albums is Apple does not feel it is needed, given the fact that you could add any photos to an album even the photos had been added previously, no error and no duplication would be caused.

 

[adrianlondon]

I think, the reason for not including a filter for photos not added to any albums is Apple does not feel it is needed ...

The option exists on MacOS.

The reason I'd like a "not in album" smart album on iOS is that it tells me which photos I've yet to organise.

This can be somewhat replicated with an iOS shortcut (as Apple does provide the feature to find photos not in an album) but it'd be easier if it were in the Photos app natively.

 

[liberte1776]

iOS 17 photos app has the following gaps, if you record videos at a concert and want to AirPlay just the audio portion to an AirPlay device without video, you cannot do that. Also, when you play audio or videos, it doesn’t show up in the control center, which would allow you to easily, AirPlay send the audio where you want it to go. When you play videos in the photo app, they will not background picture and picture style, so if you get out of the app video or audio stops playing. This is Apple’s own app, why is it only half baked? !

Is any of this fixed in iOS 18?

 

[ReddJive]

The app is garbage now. I had everything organized and process flows to manage things. It's all broken now and the app is just bad. After running the beta I am seriously considering using google photos or Microsoft. I don't know it's like one bad app after the other.

Why change an app that works just fine? This is frustrating.

 

[Webcat86]

Also I have 12,000 photos neatly organised into folders and galleries which is perfectly navigable. This could be a deal breaker.

I would love to hear more about how you've organised yours. I have always missed my old Nokia's photo approach — take a photo, add a tag, and that's saved. Your library could be neatly organised in its entirety, whereas the Apple approach is to have a humongous photo dump of a camera roll.

I have a lot of albums on my iPhone but I don't think there's a way to specifically filter photos that are not in an album, is that right? So I've not really figured out a good way to organise my photos because the main camera roll doesn't indicate if something is already saved in an album, and if I try to add a photo to an album and it's already in there, the iPhone will simply add it twice.

 

[Webcat86]

Yea... that's the thing — I quit syncing photos from my Mac — mostly because I couldn't delete them on the phone. I ended up airdropping all of my old images that I wanted. It took some time, but it was worth it.

It would be nice to have an option to sync but also be able to delete from the phone. I ended up exporting certain albums to my hard drive and removing from Photos entirely.

I think, the reason for not including a filter for photos not added to any albums is Apple does not feel it is needed, given the fact that you could add any photos to an album even the photos had been added previously, no error and no duplication would be caused.

No it's a very useful feature. The trouble with "you can add them to an album and no error would be caused" is it gives you no indication of how far back you need to go to find unsorted photos. For example, I have a toddler, which means I have a ton of photos of my toddler. I also have an album for him, going back to when he was born. I don't update the album daily, so whenever I want to make sure it's up to date I have to go into that album, see the date on the last photo, then go to camera roll and scroll through a billion photos to find it, and then select all the subsequent ones. Conversely, "show me all the unsorted photos" makes it a very quick and very easy task.

This is one of those things, much like "show emails by sender", that the Mac has and there is no zero reason that the iPhone doesn't have it — and certainly no reason for an iPad Pro to not have it.

 

[adrianlondon]

I have a lot of albums on my iPhone but I don't think there's a way to specifically filter photos that are not in an album, is that right? So I've not really figured out a good way to organise my photos because the main camera roll doesn't indicate if something is already saved in an album, and if I try to add a photo to an album and it's already in there, the iPhone will simply add it twice.

There are no smart albums on iOS. It's a big miss in my opinion, as I use the smart album "not in any album" on my Mac regularly.

You could create a shortcut which can find photos in, or not in, specific albums. I have a shortcut that (a) deletes the WhatsApp album*, (b) creates an album called "unsorted" if it doesn't exist and finally (c) moves every photo not in album "unsorted" into the "unsorted" album. In other words, my "unsorted" album contains photos I've yet to put into a proper album.

As for tags, again iOS is crap when it comes to editing metadata. Third party apps fill the gap, but at least iOS gives access to the IPTC:Caption field. Swipe up and add some keywords there. Sure, technically they're in the wrong place (keywords should be in the "Keyword" field), but the "Caption" field is searchable so it works.

*I use WhatsApp and when saving a photo there's no way to stop the app from creating a WhatsApp album and dumping the photos in there. I don't want them in there

 

[Webcat86]

There are no smart albums on iOS. It's a big miss in my opinion, as I use the smart album "not in any album" on my Mac regularly.

I use this too, but not regularly. Truth be told I rarely use Photos on the Mac at all, I think I miss iPhoto!

You could create a shortcut which can find photos in, or not in, specific albums. I have a shortcut that (a) deletes the WhatsApp album*, (b) creates an album called "unsorted" if it doesn't exist and finally (c) moves every photo not in album "unsorted" into the "unsorted" album. In other words, my "unsorted" album contains photos I've yet to put into a proper album.

Interesting idea, thanks. I despise the Shortcuts app though, it looks like Fisher Price made it but I'm also not smart enough to make my own shortcuts, so I generally leave it alone.

As for tags, again iOS is crap when it comes to editing metadata. Third party apps fill the gap, but at least iOS gives access to the IPTC:Caption field. Swipe up and add some keywords there. Sure, technically they're in the wrong place (keywords should be in the "Keyword" field), but the "Caption" field is searchable so it works.

If I was buying my first phone today, I'd strongly consider this. But with an enormous library, the thought of going back through it and manually adding keywords is very daunting.

 

[alexandr]

It would be nice to have an option to sync but also be able to delete from the phone. I ended up exporting certain albums to my hard drive and removing from Photos entirely.

Well, yes had that been an option I would be all for that I'm terribly behind on cleaning up photo library. I said I would do it before upgrading my phone — this was 2 years ago Now I'm not even pretending. I'll do it when I get a round tuit.

 

[Rychiar]

Do that many people really use their phones photos for "memories" and like real photos? cus 90 % of my album is screenshots, and memes, and pictures of random objects or food or where I'm parked or stuff for work. Any legit photos of friends and family and trips I usually organize and file on my Mac.

 

[dperetti]

What a terrible update.

We used to have 'Years, Months, DAYS, All', but now the days view is gone!

That was my favorite way to browse photos. 'Recent days' seems to have replaced it, but it’s not the same at all:

1. I want to access the days view starting from Year, then Month, down to a specific day — not starting from today.
2. The vertical scrolling in the Days view was perfect. In "Recent days", the vertical scrolling is limited to just that day. You have to scroll horizontally to move to the previous or next day. I hate it.
3. In the day view, we also had an indication of the location. This view was beautiful, and ideal for reliving past years, especially long trips.
   By the way, even the new "trips" view doesn't show these locations! 🤯
4. There is a new margin and gaps between most thumbnails. It's a change just for the sake of change that makes the content much smaller and less discernible, even on a iPhone 15 Pro max.

It really feels like a downgrade and simply makes me not want to use this app on my phone anymore. 😡

 

[tranceking26]

I updated my older iPhone 11 to see what it's like.

Actually not too bad once I customised it. Removed everything from that list. I didn't need memories or things like that, just a grid of photos and videos.

The only downside to that is Utilities needs to be re-enabled to find deleted photos.

 

[mysticmanix]

I updated my older iPhone 11 to see what it's like.

Actually not too bad once I customised it. Removed everything from that list. I didn't need memories or things like that, just a grid of photos and videos.

The only downside to that is Utilities needs to be re-enabled to find deleted photos.

Just updated. Still don't like that the grid doesn't take up the whole screen by default like it did before. The second category always takes up the last 1/3 of the page, or can you change that?

 

[Webcat86]

The only downside to that is Utilities needs to be re-enabled to find deleted photos.

can you elaborate on this?

 

[tranceking26]

can you elaborate on this?

I deleted some photos and could not find out where they were located.

Then I looked it up and it turns out that you have to enable Utilities in the above list.

 

[nymphe]

Do that many people really use their phones photos for "memories" and like real photos? cus 90 % of my album is screenshots, and memes, and pictures of random objects or food or where I'm parked or stuff for work. Any legit photos of friends and family and trips I usually organize and file on my Mac.

Yes because with iCloud Photos all of them are synced.

 

[Webcat86]

Do that many people really use their phones photos for "memories" and like real photos? cus 90 % of my album is screenshots, and memes, and pictures of random objects or food or where I'm parked or stuff for work. Any legit photos of friends and family and trips I usually organize and file on my Mac.

I use iCloud Photos so it’s the same on each device. The only real organising I do on my Mac is use smart folders to identify which photos/videos aren’t in an album. Otherwise I do most clean up etc on the iPhone or iPad.

Sometimes I’ll export to a folder in the Pictures section of the Mac but what do you do with yours on the Mac that you aren’t doing on the phone?

 

[timeislove]

the worst of all Photo app upgrade (also IOS as a whole) ever!

in general, there is a lot of display estates wasted.

don't know why keep a rather thick separations between photos in grid view. so, for a row size of 3 photos being displayed, that's the default view i suppose, there are 4 gaps, 2 in between 3 photos and 2 on both sides; pinching out for a row size of 5 photos, there are 6 gaps, amazingly the gap size is almost the same as that for row size of 3 photos.

the grid view now looks boring, displaying all photos in shape of a square, as compared to the previous version in which some of the photos (featured ones?) was automatically shown bigger, either square or rectangle, with zoomed views, which give a more energetic feel.

The options and album selections are shown, again boringly, like oval rectangles or buttons.

apart from the UI "tweaks", i didn't see any additional features, not my long waited functions to show "similar photos" (hence users are equipped with a tools to remove redundant shots), and adjusting exposures in EV.

some of the reviewers highlighted the enhanced abilities to search for photo based on textual criteria. as far as i have tried, i did not see any noticeable improvement, rather, the simply breaks your text into keyword search!

the auto generated views of trip is good. however, except for the first few minutes after i upgraded to IOS 18, it did show only a few of my trips with destinations, the photo app now shows all trips with the periods of travelling rather than the locations of destination. i guess the app need some time to curate again, may spare some time to plug the phone back again to power.

all in all, the photo app upgrade in IOS 18 is disappointing, with uglier UI and without any real improvement in functions.