iOS 18 Photos App Redesign: Two Months Later, Users Still Divided

[LucM1974]

If they could just PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back the camera roll album (with the logic how it worked and sorted content). My entire workflow no longer works and there is no way to fix it - I went through all customization options several times

And whoever does not want it, can just uncheck it. Thank you

 

[Hank001]

And still smart albums are not synced from my Mac to the iPad and iPhone, why on earth not? Booth, my 2024 iPad Pro and my iPhone 16 Pro have more CPU power than my 2020 iMac, but no, can not use smart albums on them. So I have to recreate all smart albums as static ones and have to manually update these, how stupid.

QFT.
This a 1,000 times.
What's up Apple? No dogfooding?

 

[chickenpiccata]

For me the worst part of photos, is that when you move a photo to an album, it stays in the recent view.

photos should truly be able to fully move from one album to another. That way you could have a cleaner ‘recent’ view.

also it would be great if we could create smart albums like on macOS and that smart album would sync between macOS and iOS.

On a Mac you can make a smart album of photos not in any other album. I think it’s something like ‘Photos not in album … Any’. But you can’t bring that to the brain-dead iOS app…..

 

[BGarza]

They forced an experience akin to sitting under the hood of a car, instead of in the cabin. Yes, you can rev an engine if you pull on the throttle linkage, but I much prefer using my right foot...

If it was up to me, I'd would have designed a concierge assistant that would ask, "Do you want to keep the experience of Photos simple and familiar, or do you want to try out an entirely new ecosystem?" And then allow the simple user experience to be accessed at any time, because most people only want to take advantage of pro features 5% of the time. Now, every time I try to show someone a photo or video in landscape, I find the myself tapping incessantly to try and maximize the viewing experience, where they seem to think I want to see UI elements instead.

 

[AbSoluTc]

They forced an experience akin to sitting under the hood of a car, instead of in the cabin. Yes, you can rev an engine if you pull on the throttle linkage, but I much prefer using my right foot...

If it was up to me, I'd would have designed a concierge assistant that would ask, "Do you want to keep the experience of Photos simple and familiar, or do you want to try out an entirely new ecosystem?" And then allow the simple user experience to be accessed at any time, because most people only want to take advantage of pro features 5% of the time. Now, every time I try to show someone a photo or video in landscape, I find the myself tapping incessantly to try and maximize the viewing experience, where they seem to think I want to see UI elements instead.

God I hate the tapping! It's designed to make you look stupid when trying to share with people. It's just terrible and needs to be fixed.

 

[serryjeinfeld]

new photos app is fine.

why they keep redesigning it is the issue. clearly they keeps screwing up, but the newest photos is the best version of photos.

 

[Scotty_Trees]

I got used to it after about spending 5 minutes with it. Was it a shock to the system? Sure. But then I got used to it. It's cleaner UI wise for sure, but there was also nothing wrong with the way previous design either. I dunno there's too many hills do die on these days and this ain't one of them for me.

 

[Artemis70]

It's super easy to customize and bring the display back to old times. Takes less than 30 seconds.

Can you give me the steps to bring the display back to old times? I want the main view to be the library, like old times, with options to switch to albums etcetera. That is not possible. I have removed all the junk that Apple added, which helps. But I still have to scroll down to get into the library view that I used to have. In the old app, I could change the "zoom" level of the library. Now it forgets when I go out of the library view, so I end up zooming in all the time.

Btw, I live in Europe and have no access to Apple Intelligence. But even if it was available in my region, it isn't available in my language and won't be for quite some time. Changing the interface for Apple Intelligence, that a large percentage of users doesn't have access to is a way to piss those users off.

 

[Artemis70]

I happened to write feedback to Apple on this topic just yesterday. I can't get used to the new photos app, and I use the app every single day. I have customized it, removing all the junk that Apple added that I didn't need. Customization helps, but I still can't get used to the new app. One of my gripes is that I have to scroll to get to the view that I want as the initial view. This is what the original view was in the original app, where I do 99% of my actions. My second gripe is that the app doesn't remember the scroll factor on the library. It always starts with images in 5 columns. This is not my favorite view and I haven't found how to change it. It keeps resetting to 5. My third gripe is the amount of junk that Apple added that I had to remove through customization. Yes, I got past this, but this shouldn't be needed.

All in all, my #1 and #2 are a daily nuisance. I have no choice but to bear it. The end result is that I do more photos work on my MacBook than before, as that app is still normal.

 

[DoogH]

I love it. So many features are exposed that were unused before.

 

[robl1967]

After customizing it is a bit better. But i feel still that the new App is big step in the wrong direction.
I can‘t understand why they try to change that Interface to a onepage webpage. You have to scroll every time and do a lot of Click to open and close a panel. It is very frustrating.
I hate the new App.

 

[macuser1992]

Absolutely hate it. They ruined the app! Barely usable any more. The collections of images are so confused, the images just randomly fill the screen or don’t. It’s an embarrassment of an app. Can’t believe this was released. Apple are going downhill lately.

Not to mention them absolutely Nuking the indexing within the meta data of photos. I used to be able to index via which camera or camera lens and thats absolutely gone. disgusting. software engineers and designers should be ashamed. it was a perfectly great app before

 

[citysnaps]

Can you give me the steps to bring the display back to old times? I want the main view to be the library, like old times, with options to switch to albums etcetera. That is not possible. I have removed all the junk that Apple added, which helps. But I still have to scroll down to get into the library view that I used to have. In the old app, I could change the "zoom" level of the library. Now it forgets when I go out of the library view, so I end up zooming in all the time.

Btw, I live in Europe and have no access to Apple Intelligence. But even if it was available in my region, it isn't available in my language and won't be for quite some time. Changing the interface for Apple Intelligence, that a large percentage of users doesn't have access to is a way to piss those users off.

This worked for me:

1. Open the Photos app.

2. Scroll to the bottom and select Customize & Reorder.

3. Deselect the options you don't want to see.

4. *If* you want to see some of them, simply drag them in the order you'd like them to appear on your screen.

5. Close the window by clicking on the "x" in the upper right corner.

 

[Eureka20]

I absolutely hate it-- I've resorted to using my iPad pre-update to do everything in Photos. Ugh! I wish they'd let us go back to the old version of photos.

 

[Peteorius]

honestly, once you have it customized it's not bad. like most app 'updates' after awhile you won't even think about it

 

[citysnaps]

honestly, once you have it customized it's not bad. like most app 'updates' after awhile you won't even think about it

Yep... My updated Photos app that I configured this morning works exactly like the Photos app of old with just a camera-roll photo grid.

Seems many here don't want to take the less than 30 seconds to configure theirs.

 

[B4U]

Glad I'm not the only one getting daily Apple notifications about the iOS 18 update even with auto updates turned off...

I just don't want iOS18 Apple. That's why I don't have installed the system yet.. let me in peace!

Despite the fact that I deliberately deleted the damn update from the phone every bloody time, the daily nudging is still happening. 🤮
I am almost at the point that I will put the damn tvOS profile back on again.

 

[citysnaps]

Seems many are not aware that iOS 18.1.1 was released by Apple as an emergency update to deal with a major security issue/exploit that can result in adverse consequences on one's phone. It was covered on MR recently, and on the national news last night.

 

[macrlz9]

I’m an old timer. I’ve been using Photos since iPhoto 1.0 was announced and offered as a download from apple.com BUT I am very open to changing with the times.

The only issue I have is albums default to newest on the top where the main library view is newest at the bottom. I can adjust to a change either way but it needs to be consistent. My muscle memory has to stop and think each time I go into a different section.

 

[SaltyRock]

I hate the new photos app! its almost impossible to find my favorites album where I always used to go...
No idea how apple thought this new system would be any kind of improvement...
Same goes for the video player...

 

[kilimanjaro]

It is a mess.
To be honest, I don't really use it as a result.

 

[cbaca51]

There is no divide, most people hate it lol

 

[whatgift]

It works the same way in new Photos app in individual albums created by user. BUT, in Photo Library, which is the main area of the Photos app, the same swipe will lead to switching the view from "All" to "Months" which is VERY frustrating.

The reasoning is that you're not going "back" to anything, you're simply navigating down to the other collections. The functionality of the main library is exactly as it was prior to iOS18 (with the swiping to change time periods). The X button is right there and near most people's thumbs to show the other sections again. Also, you can tap the time period from anywhere in the library again to get to the bottom, then simply scroll up to see the collections again.

 

[whatgift]

One of my gripes is that I have to scroll to get to the view that I want as the initial view. This is what the original view was in the original app, where I do 99% of my actions. My second gripe is that the app doesn't remember the scroll factor on the library. It always starts with images in 5 columns. This is not my favorite view and I haven't found how to change it. It keeps resetting to 5.

You can interact with your library (open recent photos, select photos, search) immediately on opening the app, and scrolling down is only required if you want to filter or change the view (or see more photos, which is the same as prior to iOS18).

I changed the main library view to 3 columns wide by pinching in the library when I first installed iOS18, and it has remained that way since. The issue with yours would seem to be a bug specific to you.

 

[svish]

Prefer the earlier simpler design. Takes a bit of time to get used to.