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

[timeislove]

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.



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.

i see your points. but the album in photo app, same as that in google photo, is more kind of tagging than the old-school folder concept. hence, a photo would belong to multiple album (or tagging), while photos in folders are kind of exclusive, like a paper which could only be physically stored in one folder.

any reason for you insisting to sort photos into albums?

with the face recognition, you may search for a person any time, and you may also assign multiple faces to one person.

as a workaround, you could search for the subjects of unsorted photos and add them to your named albums.

 

[Webcat86]

i see your points. but the album in photo app, same as that in google photo, is more kind of tagging than the old-school folder concept. hence, a photo would belong to multiple album (or tagging), while photos in folders are kind of exclusive, like a paper which could only be physically stored in one folder.

any reason for you insisting to sort photos into albums?

with the face recognition, you may search for a person any time, and you may also assign multiple faces to one person.

as a workaround, you could search for the subjects of unsorted photos and add them to your named albums.

Search is excellent and I use it a lot, but it requires you to first know what you’re looking for. You’re also dependent on it showing you all applicable results. Sometimes you want to just look through an album and get reminded of who or what is in the photos.

Albums also show that the photos have been reviewed and intentionally kept. As phone storage grows and we keep more and more pictures on our phones I like to try and reduce clutter and junk. For me, having everything in a single grid makes this much harder.

 

[Wyatt Wong]

Absolute dumb idea to overhaul an app that already had a simplified and easy to navigate layout. I wish they would revert to how the app's interface looked in iOS 17, and if anything add a few customization options there. Don't rework the entire app's design layout. Don't need to break what's not broken, if it ain't broke don't fix it.


Unless they further tweak the design in the next beta release like last week, people are going to have a meltdown next month when the redesign goes live.

I also want they revert the UI back to iOS Photos 17

 

[timeislove]

Absolute dumb idea to overhaul an app that already had a simplified and easy to navigate layout. I wish they would revert to how the app's interface looked in iOS 17, and if anything add a few customization options there. Don't rework the entire app's design layout. Don't need to break what's not broken, if it ain't broke don't fix it.


Unless they further tweak the design in the next beta release like last week, people are going to have a meltdown next month when the redesign goes live.

I don’t mind they overhaul the photo app, but please add features and tweak the UI for better use.

In ios18, the photo UI (plus that for control center) is a total failure. The new UI wastes a lot of display estates, replace the grid views with rows of squared thumbnails.

I wonder if its designer has a failed sense of beauty!

 

[timeislove]

I also want they revert the UI back to iOS Photos 17

Me too. The UI updates look ugly and waste a lot of display estates. Only the removal of day view is a good move.

 

[dandeco]

I'm going to miss the Camera Roll album, that's for sure. Now it lumps those with pics from my Mac Photos library, creating duplicates within the same screen.

 

[Webcat86]

I'm going to miss the Camera Roll album, that's for sure. Now it lumps those with pics from my Mac Photos library, creating duplicates within the same screen.

what do you mean?

 

[dandeco]

what do you mean?

Ack, I meant the "Recent" album, or whatever it was called, where the photos you take on a camera or save from online would be stored.

 

[Webcat86]

Ack, I meant the "Recent" album, or whatever it was called, where the photos you take on a camera or save from online would be stored.

I honestly have no idea what you're referring to you're seeing duplicates since updating to iOS18?

 

[dandeco]

It was in the old "Albums" view seen here...

On the top, there was something called "Recents", though it's not visible in that photo, but it allowed you to just view the photos you took with your device's camera and anything you saved from online, not throwing the synced pics from the MacOS Photos library in the mix.

 

[Webcat86]

It was in the old "Albums" view seen here...

On the top, there was something called "Recents", though it's not visible in that photo, but it allowed you to just view the photos you took with your device's camera and anything you saved from online, not throwing the synced pics from the MacOS Photos library in the mix.

Thanks for clarifying. I didn't know that about the Recents folder

 

[dburkhanaev]

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.

iOS 18 is now officially here. I think iOS19 will be refinements. I didn't do the iOS betas this year. I just wanted my phone to work correctly when I need it. The photos app needs some work. I don't know exactly how to fix it, but it feels a little undercooked. Things that were quicker to get to now feel slower and more cumbersome.

iOS 18 in general has some nice things, but it also feels half-baked in places. If you have an app library with a hidden folder, but that folder is also empty- why do I see a blank rectangle at the end of the app library (category view) which then scans my face quickly, only to reveal also an empty square. The difference now is that there aren't slightly darker empty sub-squares therein.

Quick access controls. No one really uses AirDrop to such an extent that it needs a quick access. To put it there they truncated bluetooth and wifi controls into a folder together. Things that were two clicks away are now a click, a long press, and a third click away. Everything feels a little slower and a little more cumbersome.

There are also bugs inside of the new monochrome color themes for the home page. It just needs some refinement.

To finish on topic, Apple cleaned up some of the issues with the Photos app that were evident in videos about iOS 18 Photos App beta. But it still isn't quick and easy. There are too many types of albums, collections, and activities going on in the unified page to still be useful. It isn't apparent where recent pictures are. Recent days will show some recent pictures but not all recent media. It misses screen caps and other things because they aren't photos that you took so they can't be lumped in with recent days. It's too confusing really.

 

[dburkhanaev]

It was in the old "Albums" view seen here...

On the top, there was something called "Recents", though it's not visible in that photo, but it allowed you to just view the photos you took with your device's camera and anything you saved from online, not throwing the synced pics from the MacOS Photos library in the mix.

This here ^^^^

My biggest issue with iOS 18 Photos app. It is so hard to get to what is recent media. And just to make it more special they created an album in new photos called 'Recent Days', but it only contains images captured with your camera. No screen shots or saved online images.

 

[NauticalDan]

This is one of the worst iOS updates in years.

All my camera roll photos (photos taken with the iPhone camera, saved images, and screenshots) are mixed in with photos I’ve synced from file folders on my Mac. It’s impossible to tell what’s what now and it’s a big mess of photos.

I use to organize my camera roll photos into folders on my Mac periodically that I wanted to keep. Now I have no idea what’s camera roll photos still needing to be organized.

 

[NoIdentity]

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. 😡

The change to the Photos app is indeed a downgrade with worst usability.

I have professional tools to work with photography and yet Photos was just better at managing and displaying personal images. I would have moved all of my personal photos to Lightroom classic, but Photos did bring something more to the table, while still being pretty decent.

This change feels like using web app instead of an actual app. Having some separation between views is very useful, even before I disliked that you had to scroll so far for utilities. But it was still better than this.

I have to concur that the day view was a nice way to look back at your days at past pictures. Easier and more manageable than gor example Lightroom.

And in addition th we have made albums now very gard to navigate. O have folders and albums in and a good amount of albums on its own, this wierd scrool system just makes everything so hard to be seen from afar.

This app now needs a lot of work to get back at what it was just a few days ago.

Why bake something that worked so well.

 

[timeislove]

iOS 18 is now officially here. I think iOS19 will be refinements. I didn't do the iOS betas this year. I just wanted my phone to work correctly when I need it. The photos app needs some work. I don't know exactly how to fix it, but it feels a little undercooked. Things that were quicker to get to now feel slower and more cumbersome.

iOS 18 in general has some nice things, but it also feels half-baked in places. If you have an app library with a hidden folder, but that folder is also empty- why do I see a blank rectangle at the end of the app library (category view) which then scans my face quickly, only to reveal also an empty square. The difference now is that there aren't slightly darker empty sub-squares therein.

Quick access controls. No one really uses AirDrop to such an extent that it needs a quick access. To put it there they truncated bluetooth and wifi controls into a folder together. Things that were two clicks away are now a click, a long press, and a third click away. Everything feels a little slower and a little more cumbersome.

There are also bugs inside of the new monochrome color themes for the home page. It just needs some refinement.

To finish on topic, Apple cleaned up some of the issues with the Photos app that were evident in videos about iOS 18 Photos App beta. But it still isn't quick and easy. There are too many types of albums, collections, and activities going on in the unified page to still be useful. It isn't apparent where recent pictures are. Recent days will show some recent pictures but not all recent media. It misses screen caps and other things because they aren't photos that you took so they can't be lumped in with recent days. It's too confusing really.

Photo app is undecooked?

To many the app is overcooked.

Most complaint about swiping down and down for albums. To me it is not an issue as one could customise what to be shown and in what order.

The most annoying is the new UI has got boring (only squared thumbnails in grid view) and less nice looking (all albums are in oval shaped half pic half text buttons.

It wastes a lot of display estates too. Relatively thick gaps kept between photos and two sides in grid view. When pinching out for switching from row of 3 photos to 5 photos, the gap size remain, effectively keeping 6 nos of thick gaps kept between photos and on two sides.

It looks thick gaps between tooth. How could it be looking worser.

 

[timeislove]

The change to the Photos app is indeed a downgrade with worst usability.

I have professional tools to work with photography and yet Photos was just better at managing and displaying personal images. I would have moved all of my personal photos to Lightroom classic, but Photos did bring something more to the table, while still being pretty decent.

This change feels like using web app instead of an actual app. Having some separation between views is very useful, even before I disliked that you had to scroll so far for utilities. But it was still better than this.

I have to concur that the day view was a nice way to look back at your days at past pictures. Easier and more manageable than gor example Lightroom.

And in addition th we have made albums now very gard to navigate. O have folders and albums in and a good amount of albums on its own, this wierd scrool system just makes everything so hard to be seen from afar.

This app now needs a lot of work to get back at what it was just a few days ago.

Why bake something that worked so well.

The UI designer is lacking a sense of beauty!

The new UI looks ugly and waste a lot of display estates too, in particular for users using small screen mobiles.

Keeping thick gaps between photos in grid view is the biggest fault! (Seeing the search results in grid view)

And the albums are exhibited as rows of oval shaped half pic half text buttons, which is ugliest I have ever seen in UI design.

 

[SebCohen]

In my humble photographers opinion, Apple is just trying to solve/FIX a problem of their own creation.

People take too many photos.

As they want ALL your photos in their app/iCloud and under folder structure, what they then are creating is a mess of a mountain of photos. For YOU, all they want is one unified place to look at them.

Which was fine, in 2010.

As I am a visual person, personally I’ve always put mobile phone photos in a specific month folder, events and years. These I also tag, so I can create automatic albums or search for stuff quickly.

Special events gets a separate folder. I also do this with my DSLR/Mirrorless. That way I get an immediate simple visual feedback what’s where.

2020/01.01 - January- Mobile
2020/15.01 - January - Mobile - Wedding so and so
2020/16.01 - January - Mobile

Any system Apple implements won’t fit me…..I leave a copy of my iPhone photos on the phone, no copy in iClouud. I then use my computer and another cloud provider to mirror my folder structure with automatic backup.

(Why do it this way? Apples way is sooo much easier? Well, have you tried getting ALL your photos off Photos/iCloud to do backup or migrate to another provider? “Let Apple manage your photos”. Try. Then ask me.)

 

[SebCohen]

The UI designer is lacking a sense of beauty!

The new UI looks ugly and waste a lot of display estates too, in particular for users using small screen mobiles.

Keeping thick gaps between photos in grid view is the biggest fault! (Seeing the search results in grid view)

And the albums are exhibited as rows of oval shaped half pic half text buttons, which is ugliest I have ever seen in UI design.

It’s just messy/noisy

 

[timeislove]

In my humble photographers opinion, Apple is just trying to solve/FIX a problem of their own creation.

People take too many photos.

As they want ALL your photos in their app/iCloud and under folder structure, what they then are creating is a mess of a mountain of photos. For YOU, all they want is one unified place to look at them.

Which was fine, in 2010.

As I am a visual person, personally I’ve always put mobile phone photos in a specific month folder, events and years. These I also tag, so I can create automatic albums or search for stuff quickly.

Special events gets a separate folder. I also do this with my DSLR/Mirrorless. That way I get an immediate simple visual feedback what’s where.

2020/01.01 - January- Mobile
2020/15.01 - January - Mobile - Wedding so and so
2020/16.01 - January - Mobile

Any system Apple implements won’t fit me…..I leave a copy of my iPhone photos on the phone, no copy in iClouud. I then use my computer and another cloud provider to mirror my folder structure with automatic backup.

(Why do it this way? Apples way is sooo much easier? Well, have you tried getting ALL your photos off Photos/iCloud to do backup or migrate to another provider? “Let Apple manage your photos”. Try. Then ask me.)

hmm... i am familiar with folders of photos too, as i am a long time user of DSLR that the companion software would auto generate dated folders for transferring the photos from camera to PC.

however, folder is kind of old-school concept, which mimics the filing of papers into folders that a paper would be exclusively stored in one and only one folder.

with electronic copies, or RAW/JPG for photos we could have more flexible way to store them, with tagging, one object could belong to multiple categories, which is extremely suitable for keeping photos.

the album of both apple and google adopt the concept of tagging rather than folders. hence, a photo of my son could be in multiple albums, e.g. family, event, date, etc.

as our photo libraries are getting bigger and the advancement in searching capabilities by photo objects and metadata, storing photos in a separate album is not really necessary albeit keeping a photo in multiple album is flexible.

to me, keeping photos in an album is often temporary and used for online sharing, e.g. after having a trip with friends.

a month ago, i spent days and hrs to aggregate the albums of photos on google and the dated folders on my NAS. as the nos of dated folders (albums) got so many, i found hard time to browse and mange the albums. i grouped the dated folders into year albums, and rely the google photos' search to locate the photos i am looking for, and keep only a few albums for very special events.

 

[NoIdentity]

hmm... i am familiar with folders of photos too, as i am a long time user of DSLR that the companion software would auto generate dated folders for transferring the photos from camera to PC.

however, folder is kind of old-school concept, which mimics the filing of papers into folders that a paper would be exclusively stored in one and only one folder.

with electronic copies, or RAW/JPG for photos we could have more flexible way to store them, with tagging, one object could belong to multiple categories, which is extremely suitable for keeping photos.

the album of both apple and google adopt the concept of tagging rather than folders. hence, a photo of my son could be in multiple albums, e.g. family, event, date, etc.

as our photo libraries are getting bigger and the advancement in searching capabilities by photo objects and metadata, storing photos in a separate album is not really necessary albeit keeping a photo in multiple album is flexible.

to me, keeping photos in an album is often temporary and used for online sharing, e.g. after having a trip with friends.

a month ago, i spent days and hrs to aggregate the albums of photos on google and the dated folders on my NAS. as the nos of dated folders (albums) got so many, i found hard time to browse and mange the albums. i grouped the dated folders into year albums, and rely the google photos' search to locate the photos i am looking for, and keep only a few albums for very special events.

Yes, folder structures can be helpful in organising folders, but only to some extent. Tagging and grouping photos into multiple collections/albums is much better, especially when you can put the same image in multiple collections/albums. Any decent Digital Asset Manager already allowed to do that and any good software to manage photo libraries relies on that. The problem for the vast majority of people is that those programs require a lot of effort from the person archiving and taking pictures. Lightroom Classic doesn't do much on its own; you need to organise everything, which is something that most people just won't do. Here is where Apple Photos was, maybe still is, shining. Even as a professional photographer, I find Apple Photos more intuitive, especially for personal pictures. If their app would support NAS linked photos I think they would actually have a very solid contender even for more serious hobby photographers.

I wonder how will the change affect the macOS version...

 

[NauticalDan]

In my humble photographers opinion, Apple is just trying to solve/FIX a problem of their own creation.

People take too many photos.

As they want ALL your photos in their app/iCloud and under folder structure, what they then are creating is a mess of a mountain of photos. For YOU, all they want is one unified place to look at them.

Which was fine, in 2010.

As I am a visual person, personally I’ve always put mobile phone photos in a specific month folder, events and years. These I also tag, so I can create automatic albums or search for stuff quickly.

Special events gets a separate folder. I also do this with my DSLR/Mirrorless. That way I get an immediate simple visual feedback what’s where.

2020/01.01 - January- Mobile
2020/15.01 - January - Mobile - Wedding so and so
2020/16.01 - January - Mobile

Any system Apple implements won’t fit me…..I leave a copy of my iPhone photos on the phone, no copy in iClouud. I then use my computer and another cloud provider to mirror my folder structure with automatic backup.

(Why do it this way? Apples way is sooo much easier? Well, have you tried getting ALL your photos off Photos/iCloud to do backup or migrate to another provider? “Let Apple manage your photos”. Try. Then ask me.)

This change to the Photo's app is exactly why I keep files in my own directory structure on my Mac and sync photo's to my phone. I don't trust Apple to not make a stupid change one day and make me regret having iCloud Photo's / Photo's app being the source of truth where all my photo's live. It is difficult to export them out easily.

 

[NoIdentity]

This change to the Photo's app is exactly why I keep files in my own directory structure on my Mac and sync photo's to my phone. I don't trust Apple to not make a stupid change one day and make me regret having iCloud Photo's / Photo's app being the source of truth where all my photo's live. It is difficult to export them out easily.

There is one stupid way to do it. You can move everything from the Photos app in Lightroom (cloud version), you just need enough space on the Adobe cloud. I believe it moves all the albums and other. Didn’t try it though.

But generally I agree that moving out of the Photos app is hard. But moving catalogs between other programs is also not trivial. There is definitive lack of a standard.

 

[cjsuk]

Ok I bitched and complained earlier and I'll review my comments now.

So the Photos app on the Mac is fine. It still works.

The Photos app on iOS is bloody awful now. Absolute mess.

 

[timeislove]

Yes, folder structures can be helpful in organising folders, but only to some extent. Tagging and grouping photos into multiple collections/albums is much better, especially when you can put the same image in multiple collections/albums. Any decent Digital Asset Manager already allowed to do that and any good software to manage photo libraries relies on that. The problem for the vast majority of people is that those programs require a lot of effort from the person archiving and taking pictures. Lightroom Classic doesn't do much on its own; you need to organise everything, which is something that most people just won't do. Here is where Apple Photos was, maybe still is, shining. Even as a professional photographer, I find Apple Photos more intuitive, especially for personal pictures. If their app would support NAS linked photos I think they would actually have a very solid contender even for more serious hobby photographers.

I wonder how will the change affect the macOS version...

What is NAS linked to photos? And what support you are looking for?

I find Google Photo is leading Apple miles away for the friendliness to photographers.

Google photos supports almost all formats including RAWs, displaying most of the camera and photo metadata.

One very nice but not known to everyone is Google photo tries to estimate the info that was omitted at the time of photo taking. For example, once I took my trustful 5d and mobile to a trip and use either of them when the phone condition was allowed. At the end, Google photo helped fill in the missing location info of the photos taken by the old 5D by using locations captured in the photos taken by the mobiles. Google also auto stitches some of the landscape shots and generates a few beautiful pano photos.

The most of all is Google would once a while prompt me collages and some touching “Now and Then” photos recalling some of my good old memories.

That’s why I subscribed Google services for more storage and trying to move photos to Google storage albeit I have a full backup of photos in my NAS.