Ongoing iOS 18 Bug Prevents Photo Edits From Being Saved

[MacRumors]

There is an ongoing but infrequent Photos bug that some iPhone users have been experiencing since upgrading to iOS 18. The issue occurs when attempting to save edits on an image, with users seeing the following message: "There was an error saving this photo. Please try again later."

As the message suggests, edits are not able to be saved, and hitting "Cancel" and discarding changes is the only way to get out of the editing interface.

A lot of the complaints about the problem have been from users who have an iPhone 16 model, but it also appears to be impacting some older iPhones as well. We've run into this bug several times at MacRumors, and it seems to be impacting every version of iOS 18 to date.

Reports about the bug started in September, and have continued since then. Most recently, several beta testers running iOS 18.2 have reported seeing the popup. It is worth noting that this is an error that some people ran into before iOS 18, but it appears to be much more frequent now.

It's not clear what's causing the problem, and it does not seem to impact all users or even every photo. It could be linked to Live Photos, or it could be an issue with iCloud Photos. Some users have all photos from a specific day bugged, indicating a problem with photo capture or saving.

There is no complete fix, but duplicating a broken image with a "still photo" allows the edits to be saved, but it removes Live Photo and Photographic Styles. Apple is aware of the issue and is working on a fix.

Article Link: Ongoing iOS 18 Bug Prevents Photo Edits From Being Saved

 

[sw1tcher]

And this is why I continue to stick with my OS upgrade schedule where I do not upgrade to a new OS version until the x.4 or x.5 version is out.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

wait for .4 or .5 (approx. WWDC time) is the new wait for .2 or .3 from the good old days. I miss "just works" Apple.

 

[sinoka56]

so is it a Photos app bug or an iOS bug? is the Photos app using a private API to just save the files?

 

[Lizzard899]

Thats why I choose to only have 1 photo on my phone which is just the one I use for the wallpaper. Id delete it but then it would prob delete as my wallpaper too

 

[jrlcopy]

The Photos app also has an issue, if you do a "clean up", save it, and then go to edit the colors/exposure/sat/etc... it instantly undoes your clean up changes. So annoying.

 

[JosephAW]

Was having trouble editing photos today with iOS 17.7.1, it would just sit there. Tried relaunching photos app but nothing happened. Rebooted and then it worked. Wonder if it related to xconnect updates.

 

[UpsideDownEclair]

Hopefully the bug with sRGB color on screenshots getting remapped to P3 gets picked up on… Half my screenshots look oversaturated. Assigning the sRGB profile back to them doesn’t fully get rid of that

 

[Geoffb9]

Oh. I have experienced this myself on my iPhone 16 Pro Max and iOS 18.1. I thought my photo was corrupted or something.
What I did to solve it was to duplicate it and it worked with the duplicate copy. That was weird.

 

[7thson]

This doesn’t surprise me at all. Random albums don’t show up in the share sheet either. The Photos app overhaul is hands down my biggest gripe about iOS18. It feels like they changed it for change sake and now we get to beta test it until it works properly.

 

[sw1tcher]

iOS 18 bugs... Apple service outage for Podcasts. Since 11:00 AM this morning?

 

[scorpio vega]

I haven’t seen this bug yet but of course after posting this I probably will. Lmao

 

[klasma]

As the message suggests, edits are not able to be saved, and hitting "Cancel" and discarding changes is the only way to get out of the editing interface.

What the message actually suggests is that trying to save the changes later would work — but presumably it doesn't.

 

[klasma]

Hopefully the bug with sRGB color in screenshots getting remapped to P3 gets picked up on… Half my screenshots look oversaturated. Assigning the sRGB profile back to them doesn’t fully get rid of that

I had a similar thing happen with custom wallpapers.

 

[midkay]

I have a family member that’s suffering from this issue severely since updating to iOS 18.1 on their 16 Pro. Many of the photos they take, for seemingly no rhyme or reason, do not allow edits to be saved and show this exact error. If they AirDrop me the photo, I can’t edit it either. Really hope Apple can fix this in 18.2 or sooner.

 

[DailySlow]

There is an ongoing but infrequent Photos bug that some iPhone users have been experiencing since upgrading to iOS 18. The issue occurs when attempting to save edits on an image, with users seeing the following message: "There was an error saving this photo. Please try again later."

As the message suggests, edits are not able to be saved, and hitting "Cancel" and discarding changes is the only way to get out of the editing interface.

A lot of the complaints about the problem have been from users who have an iPhone 16 model, but it also appears to be impacting some older iPhones as well. We've run into this bug several times at MacRumors, and it seems to be impacting every version of iOS 18 to date.

Reports about the bug started in September, and have continued since then. Most recently, several beta testers running iOS 18.2 have reported seeing the popup. It is worth noting that this is an error that some people ran into before iOS 18, but it appears to be much more frequent now.

It's not clear what's causing the problem, and it does not seem to impact all users or even every photo. It could be linked to Live Photos, or it could be an issue with iCloud Photos. Some users have all photos from a specific day bugged, indicating a problem with photo capture or saving.

There is no complete fix, but duplicating a broken image with a "still photo" allows the edits to be saved, but it removes Live Photo and Photographic Styles. Apple is aware of the issue and is working on a fix.

Article Link: Ongoing iOS 18 Bug Prevents Photo Edits From Being Saved

This is bad. Very bad. I have not seen it - no Iphone photos today other than a short video screen recording 5 secs.

 

[doboy]

Why am I not surprised. Apple really needs to shape up.

 

[MaddMacs]

Glad I waited.

 

[ThomasJL]

Typical Tim Cook. He cares more about maximizing profits for shareholders instead of providing customers products with a similar level of user-friendliness as before he was CEO.

 

[nebsta]

Both myself and my parter are getting this issue and I wouldn't call it infrequent. It also affects my ability to share the photo. I even had it affecting a 10 year old photo on the weekend which is quite alarming. Hopefully they can provide a fix soon and it doesn't turn out that the files are corrupted.

 

[jonnyb098]

Seriously this is the worst software rollout since iOS 13….its soooo buggy all over the place

 

[jonnyb098]

wait for .4 or .5 (approx. WWDC time) is the new wait for .2 or .3 from the good old days. I miss "just works" Apple.

Indeed. I miss the good ol days where a yearly update had maybe 2-3 huge features and THATS IT and they’d perfect it very quickly. Now it’s a 6 month wait to get software thats mostly stable.

 

[UliBaer]

Glad, i'm still running 17.7.1...

 

[Crowbot]

I have Live Photos turned off permanently and I've never seen the issue.

 

[d5aqoëp]

Sometimes when I try to save a photo from Telegram, Safari or WhatsApp, the photo is not visible in the Photos App. I scratched my head too many times over this.