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How do you feel about the Photos app redesign on iOS 18?

  • I like it!

    Votes: 133 21.5%
  • It's okay

    Votes: 174 28.1%
  • I hate it

    Votes: 325 52.5%

  • Total voters
    619
I will say that it has improved in 18.2 quite a bit, I thank whomever at Apple is bothering to read through this thread. I don’t know if I can say I don’t hate it just yet. But it’s much, much more tolerable.

The general public doesn’t even know how miserably bad this app was during the iOS 18 beta cycle.

By the public release of 18.0 things were already much better, but 18.2 feels even more significantly refined.
Unfortunately, that's been Apple's MO as of late- Make app really bad and then slowly make it better, and even though it's not as good "as it used to be", it's better than when it was total garbage.
 
I will say that it has improved in 18.2 quite a bit, I thank whomever at Apple is bothering to read through this thread. I don’t know if I can say I don’t hate it just yet. But it’s much, much more tolerable.

The general public doesn’t even know how miserably bad this app was during the iOS 18 beta cycle.

By the public release of 18.0 things were already much better, but 18.2 feels even more significantly refined.
After installing 18.2 I completely agree that it's noticeably improved from earlier versions and some of my biggest issues have been addressed. Much more tolerable now, would have been nice if it could've been like that from the start.
 
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On my new IPad Mini and iPhone 16 after upgrading, the bottom line of photos is cut in half by black screen with the options. Landscape or portrait doesn’t matter. I removed all options no change. When I click on a webpage to upload photo it opens camera in Safari with no option to open photos. Nice
 
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I will say that it has improved in 18.2 quite a bit, I thank whomever at Apple is bothering to read through this thread. I don’t know if I can say I don’t hate it just yet. But it’s much, much more tolerable.

The general public doesn’t even know how miserably bad this app was during the iOS 18 beta cycle.

By the public release of 18.0 things were already much better, but 18.2 feels even more significantly refined.
Hopefully they continue the refinements throughout iOS 18.3 - 18.X.
 
After installing 18.2 I completely agree that it's noticeably improved from earlier versions and some of my biggest issues have been addressed. Much more tolerable now, would have been nice if it could've been like that from the start.
Unfortunately "tolerable" is not the quality I'd expect from an Apple product. I still haven't updated from iOS 17 mainly because of Photos.
 
my photos widget shows no photos available and i have over 6,000 photos
there is no trips, memories, featured photos, suggested wallpapers in the app
i have resynced the photos, made sure plugged into charging and on wifi to have it index those sections but no luck
 
ugh how do i get memories, trips, featured photos, wallpaper suggestions to show up? i have reset my phone, plugged it in over night and connected to wifi and none of those have populated
i have 6,921 photos
 
ugh how do i get memories, trips, featured photos, wallpaper suggestions to show up? i have reset my phone, plugged it in over night and connected to wifi and none of those have populated
i have 6,921 photos

Modify "pinned collections". I have Favorites. You make them whatever you want. And more than one.

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Photo search is a disaster. No longer can you search for photos by street name. It just doesn't work. And, when the photos do appear, they are 5 across in tiny thumbnails. You can't pinch/expand to go to 3 across. So, with 50000 photos, it's become really difficult to find the photos I need by location. And, yes, I have sent this to Apple Feedback.
 
So I haven’t tried it because I don’t have the beta. I’ve read several articles that went into details about the new layout. What excites me about it is the customization options. There are some sections like Featured Photos and Wallpaper Suggestions that for me I’d like to hide. The new design sounds like you can customize it just to show the collections you want and in the order you want. That sounds great. I have a ton of my own Albums and being able to pin a few to that carousel sounds pretty nice.

What is it that makes it so bad? Quite a few posts talk about how bad it is but not a lot of specifics. 🤔
Photo search is a disaster....
 
Are the guys designing the Photos app even using it? It's pretty bad for me too.. date searches fell apart for me, and that's a pretty important thing for me

I wonder if it'll just keep improving over the next few years? Or if they'll consider scrapping this design effort and starting again? I mean.. ugh
 
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I wonder if it'll just keep improving over the next few years?
I don't know about you, but if I have to wait "the next few years" for the Photos app to become more usable again, I'm sure I'll just find myself taking less photos. And if I'm taking less photos, why would I need to buy a new iPhone? I think Apple just figured out how I can save some money!
 
Unpopular opinion, I know, but I like the new Photos app. It's fine. It's much better since I turned on Aspect Ratio View in View Options - without it it's hard to distinguish between photos.
 
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Photo search is a disaster. No longer can you search for photos by street name. It just doesn't work. And, when the photos do appear, they are 5 across in tiny thumbnails. You can't pinch/expand to go to 3 across. So, with 50000 photos, it's become really difficult to find the photos I need by location. And, yes, I have sent this to Apple Feedback.

Yes, this has been the biggest gripe for me with new Photos app. My wife and I used to search in Photos for things like, “[Location] [YEAR]” and it would pull up very smoothly and reliably, based on location metadata. It now does so very unreliably. I think it gets confused trying to use the AI to also look up whether the word of the [LOCATION] is written in text in any of the photos…

Only thing I saw when reading up online was to try to leave phone plugged in over wifi for long periods of time (eg. overnight) to have all the photos be properly “processed”, whatever that means… but hasn’t made a difference. Very frustrating.
 
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Unpopular opinion, I know, but I like the new Photos app. It's fine. It's much better since I turned on Aspect Ratio View in View Options - without it it's hard to distinguish between photos.
👍🏻 I’ve done this, zoomed in. Only have Utilities and personalised “pinned collections”. Much decluttered now, and I like it.
 
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Yes, this has been the biggest gripe for me with new Photos app. My wife and I used to search in Photos for things like, “[Location] [YEAR]” and it would pull up very smoothly and reliably, based on location metadata. It now does so very unreliably. I think it gets confused trying to use the AI to also look up whether the word of the [LOCATION] is written in text in any of the photos…

Only thing I saw when reading up online was to try to leave phone plugged in over wifi for long periods of time (eg. overnight) to have all the photos be properly “processed”, whatever that means… but hasn’t made a difference. Very frustrating.
I don’t think that AI is the problem (I’m not using it), it’s really that they screwed up something with searching for locations. And, yes, it does look for text in the photos rather than the location itself.
And, leaving it plugged in over WiFi does nothing as I have been doing this for weeks with no change.
Apple took a great search tool and fubared it.
 
Unpopular opinion, I know, but I like the new Photos app. It's fine. It's much better since I turned on Aspect Ratio View in View Options - without it it's hard to distinguish between photos.
Where exactly can I find this option? TIA.
 
I don’t think that AI is the problem (I’m not using it), it’s really that they screwed up something with searching for locations. And, yes, it does look for text in the photos rather than the location itself.
And, leaving it plugged in over WiFi does nothing as I have been doing this for weeks with no change.
Apple took a great search tool and fubared it.
I agree whole heartedly. I'm still on an iPhone 14 Pro Max with no Apple Intelligence. The Search Function in the Photos app prior to iOS 18 worked great for me. I could search for "Guitar" and "Tree" and immediately see a handful of pictures of ME playing a guitar with my friends by a large tree. Now? I had to Favorite a couple photos to get to them easier because now it only shows me pictures of guitars and trees, no sign of the specific photo OF ME holding and playing a guitar clearly in front of a large tree. They really ruined a lot of stuff just to push Apple Intelligence. They could have left the tabs at the bottom of the Photos App and then introduced the Apple Intelligence features in a new tab, but instead they're forcing everyone to have some sort of encounter with it, good or bad, and then just hoping they keep what sticks to the wall.
 
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