Still no Smart Albums which iPhoto / Photos for Mac has had for years!
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iOS 26 Photos App: Everything That's Changed
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I hate that they keep redesigning this app every year or two. I liked it much better pre iOS 16.
Hmm. The photos will be hidden since the glass icon is invisible. Looks like a smudge on the glass surface of my iphone.
I use "not in any album" very frequently on my laptop. It is now possible to do that on the phone, but you need to click on the "sort order" icon (not very intuitive, is it!) then filter then not in an album.
No way to save that view, or to pin it to make it easier to activate.
iOS 17.6.1
If it ain’t broke why fix it. My wife went to 18 and I saw what happened to Photos and said I don’t want that.
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They did it for me. I think I'm the only person who preferred Photos on iOS 18 to iOS 17, so I can only assume the full board at Apple sat down and decided "Let's do this for adrianlondon!". I'm very grateful.
I also like iOS 26 and prefer it to iOS 18 (which I preferred to iOS 17), so again it's all for me. Sorry not sorry.
This is frankly the one an only improvement over iOS 18. The Photos app. Seriously the only thing keeping me from going back to iOS 18.
While reading the article I was expecting a video of that. Alas, this is MR....no proper reporting here.
I simply leave all new hardware at x.0
Not wanting to learn new bugs with a x.1 update.
Apple devs don't dogfood, and that's a crying shame. A CPU from a microwave could handle that - no need for AS chips.
I like the new design EXCEPT that the settings icon (the one you access by clicking on your avatar) is ONLY available on the "collections" tab, not the "library" tab!
I use the library tab like 90% of the time (probably more like 99%), so it's actually quite irritating to have to switch to the collections tab just to access settings :/
PS - The reason I usually have to access the settings is to jumpstart the sync process - for some reason, it frequently suspends syncing to the cloud, so you have to click on "resume" (or whatever it's called). So that's another irritant - I want it ALWAYS to sync IMMEDIATELY if there's a connection.
I use the library tab like 90% of the time (probably more like 99%), so it's actually quite irritating to have to switch to the collections tab just to access settings :/
PS - The reason I usually have to access the settings is to jumpstart the sync process - for some reason, it frequently suspends syncing to the cloud, so you have to click on "resume" (or whatever it's called). So that's another irritant - I want it ALWAYS to sync IMMEDIATELY if there's a connection.
You know what? It’s a really great idea. Thank you for sending them such feedback. I’m old enough to remember the Music App you say. And I’d really like Apple let us customise the bottom bar just like we can do that with the side bar or macOS or iPadOS. Even with more reason on the iPhone because of how constrained the width is.
Sadly I think it’s difficult they allow us to, although not impossible seeing what happened to iPadOS
They made it less simple and quite annoying in iOS 18. It was one of the reasons my friend who switched to iPhone switched back to Android.
Wow! Didn’t know this trick on iOS! Works on iOS 18. Very useful.
I also have a smart album with ‘not in any album’ in my Mac to keep track of my ‘still unorganized images’
Yep - it came with iOS 18 which is one of the reasons I preferred that version of Photos to the previous one.
What really annoys me about the Photos app and when Apple talks about the Photos app in their Keynotes is that they assume everyone has a perfectly curated, gallery-ready photo library. They keep pushing collections and slideshows to show off your photos taken on trips or birthdays, when in reality there are a million photos you don't want to keep in there.
Apple should focus on how someone can sort out their Photos, and Apple Intelligence can be useful here. For example, any photo that is out of focus or taken accidentally, the Photos app will move into a folder that the user can quickly go through to see if any should be kept, or just delete. Also, I take several pictures of the same thing/setting, so then later I choose which was the best photo to keep (eg. I was caught blinking in one photo, but not in another). Again, Apple Intelligence could analyse and pick the best photo to keep and suggest the others to be deleted.
Apple should focus on how someone can sort out their Photos, and Apple Intelligence can be useful here. For example, any photo that is out of focus or taken accidentally, the Photos app will move into a folder that the user can quickly go through to see if any should be kept, or just delete. Also, I take several pictures of the same thing/setting, so then later I choose which was the best photo to keep (eg. I was caught blinking in one photo, but not in another). Again, Apple Intelligence could analyse and pick the best photo to keep and suggest the others to be deleted.
Looks fantastic. I'm still waiting for the ability to blur the background in photos that weren't taken in portrait mode. Far easier to implement (and far more useful IMO) but you still need third-party apps and subscriptions to do it. Something that's been there forever on Android.
Yeah, those are good ideas and perfectly feasible to do on device, even with older devices with 16-cores Neural Engines such as the iPhone 12 or 13. And that last example you wrote? I think they are already doing something similar when smart HDR is enabled, which takes several captions in a single shot and select the best version for each zone of the picture. Selecting the best single one from a series of otherwise identical pictures shouldn’t be much more difficult.
Also creating folders for pictures and adding a description to each of them, could help Apple Intelligence sort the pictures into their respective folder. Something that is possible already in previous iOS versions, thanks to machine learning. If you’ve used the “search” field of the Photos App you’ll know it is already possible.
Many things could already be implemented thanks to the ML features that started to appear in iOS a few years ago. They just need to improve it, and perfect it. Damn, it strikes me the Photos App is not already capable of detecting duplicates…