Does anybody actually LIKE the new iOS 18 Photos app? [MERGED]

[iFone88]

I went onto the beta this afternoon and for what it’s worth, for me, the photos redesign is no where near as bad as being made out to be.

Once you’ve gone through the customisation settings, hidden categories you don’t want to see, reordered albums etc it’s fine. No issues with it at all for me and a more modern UI and customisation is welcome

 

[AbSoluTc]

I went onto the beta this afternoon and for what it’s worth, for me, the photos redesign is no where near as bad as being made out to be.

Once you’ve gone through the customisation settings, hidden categories you don’t want to see, reordered albums etc it’s fine. No issues with it at all for me and a more modern UI and customisation is welcome

"It's fine."

We all know what it's fine means in 2024 lol

Apple and "it's fine" should never be used together. It should be great, exceptional, amazing, awesome but never, fine.

 

[iFone88]

"It's fine."

We all know what it's fine means in 2024 lol

Apple and "it's fine" should never be used together. It should be great, exceptional, amazing, awesome but never, fine.

Ha, okay.

It's good and a lot of the functions within it make sense

 

[Frankied22]

"It's fine."

We all know what it's fine means in 2024 lol

Apple and "it's fine" should never be used together. It should be great, exceptional, amazing, awesome but never, fine.

Unfortunately this is becoming the case more and more with Apple software. “It’s fine” and convincing yourself to get used to it.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Unfortunately this is becoming the case more and more with Apple software. “It’s fine” and convincing yourself to get used to it.

I agree. I won't "get used to it" if it's terrible software. I will look elsewhere for alternatives or hope the masses make a big enough stink that Apple reverses course or corrects.

I haven't used the photos app a lot as it's on a test device but just playing with it, I don't like the interface or what it's turned into. It's a jumbled mess that is not intuitive. I can't imagine the older peole that have enough trouble with stuff as is.

Apple has gone swipe crazy for a while. Swipe up, but not too far up. Swipe left but not too hard left or you'll open another feature. Swipe down, swipe left, up, down... swipe right, left, up. It's getting absurd at this point. I've activated things I didn't want because of all the swiping and hold to customize crap.

 

[Paddle1]

Well I unabashedly love it. It is sleeker and slicker and smarter. I don’t get all the hate and think maybe people just don’t like change. I like that it takes more advantage of the hardware (I think?). I also liked the bordered photo presentation which they took away. I think people just need to get used to it and will like it.

The video scrubbing functionality is objectively worse on the new one. It's not just disliked because it's different.

 

[Iwavvns]

Im not happy with the photos app either, it seems Apple took something that worked perfectly and complicated the crap out of it. Wait.. is Apple secretly run by the US Military? Wowsers.. flashbacks!

 

[Iwavvns]

Once you’ve gone through the customisation settings, hidden categories you don’t want to see, reordered albums etc it’s fine. No issues with it at all for me and a more modern UI and customisation is welcome

That’s the whole point of all of these complaints; if Apple hadn’t introduced “too much too fast”, then we wouldn’t need to go through all of these customization settings. One of the things you don’t want to do in a UX update is slow down the workflow and force users to make drastic changes to their habits. This would have gone over much better if Apple had introduced these changes gradually. I can only assume that Apple had to make all these changes now in order to get ready for something that is coming in iOS 19 or with AI.

 

[krspkbl]

I hate it. Too messy and cluttered. I don’t care about memories, pinned, recent days, etc.

When loading photos app I want the screen to just show my photos. Simple

 

[iFone88]

I hate it. Too messy and cluttered. I don’t care about memories, pinned, recent days, etc.

When loading photos app I want the screen to just show my photos. Simple

Hide them all then. It take twenty seconds

 

[Ipadonly1]

I’m finding it a bit mixed.

What I don’t get necessarily:
- when viewing a photo why does delete, favourite, share and edit need fairly big buttons below the photo? Personally I’d prefer if these lived in the three dots menu
- why do I need an icon of me and this kind of account page for Photos?
- there seems to be so many ‘customise’ buttons everywhere. ‘Customise’ is not something I’m planning to use regularly. Once I’ve customised the app, the button should be hidden, I guess in that weird account/settings page 😄. It seems like Apple knew it had to show people how to customise their photos app for when people join iOS 18, but in my view they’re not really thinking long term when people get settled into the layout they want.

What I like:
- the albums tab has sub-tabs (?) for personal, shared and activity.
- you can go super minimal on Pinned Collections. I only have Favourites, Map and Albums.
- the albums view. Very clean with good sized automatic rotation of photos in that album

What I dislike:
- if search is going to be getting so good, why can’t I hide the ‘utilities’ section altogether? Or the ‘media types’ section?
- trips. I want to like this feature, but it’s giving me a few ‘trips’ of me just literally living life in my home city. I can’t rename a trip? One trip’s title is my home city and a neighbourhood in that city. The ‘Trip’ also includes photos from the Netherlands (not my country) - some trip eh?
- wallpaper suggestions. No thanks. I know what I want. It’s pretty obvious to me what would be a good wallpaper.

The iOS version can actually be customised to be rather clean. I just have Library, swipe in the carousel to Favourites and then have Map and Albums as Pinned Collections.

The iPadOS version though allows basically no customisation of the sidebar. No way to hide Days, People, Memories, Wallpaper Suggestions etc. Even turning off ‘show featured content’ doesn’t hide the ‘featured photos’ from the sidebar. Again I think search can replace a lot of these, e.g. search for ‘photos of Grandma’

If the iPad version could be made as minimal as the iOS version, this would be an improvement in my book.

 

[Martinpa]

I thought people were being dramatic until I installed the public beta on my iPad.

I think there are some good ideas but the overall execution is really bad. You can customize the tiles at the bottom, but almost any combination looks awful, and you’re very limited by the default size everything is. If the modularity was better handled, a lot of it would feel a lot better, but right now it looks a mess…

 

[pappkristof]

I thought people were being dramatic until I installed the public beta on my iPad.

I think there are some good ideas but the overall execution is really bad. You can customize the tiles at the bottom, but almost any combination looks awful, and you’re very limited by the default size everything is. If the modularity was better handled, a lot of it would feel a lot better, but right now it looks a mess…

Unfortunately I think the iPhone version is even worse because of the single “tab” view.

 

[Ipadonly1]

I thought people were being dramatic until I installed the public beta on my iPad.

I think there are some good ideas but the overall execution is really bad. You can customize the tiles at the bottom, but almost any combination looks awful, and you’re very limited by the default size everything is. If the modularity was better handled, a lot of it would feel a lot better, but right now it looks a mess…

Exactly yes the tiles need to be better designed

 

[Vanarak19]

not a huge fan of the new app layout either.

Anyone having any luck yet with shared libraries based on a face? I’d love to share kid photos automatically but every time I create a face- based album, I get the intended photos and photos of all sorts of random things also.

 

[liam899]

not a huge fan of the new app layout either.

Anyone having any luck yet with shared libraries based on a face? I’d love to share kid photos automatically but every time I create a face- based album, I get the intended photos and photos of all sorts of random things also.

I think the feature is alright, would love if when they launch it I can toggle this on and off, also I think we should be understanding that it's still a beta version so inaccuracy is to be expected

 

[Vanarak19]

I think the feature is alright, would love if when they launch it I can toggle this on and off, also I think we should be understanding that it's still a beta version so inaccuracy is to be expected

It’s been this way since it was introduced in I think iOS 16. It’s never worked right for us. Lots and pans, cars, my backyard…all in a face album of my kid.

 

[dburkhanaev]

View attachment 2395625

Don't you just click on the shared albums section in the photos app?

Yeah you make some extra clicks that I don’t need with iOS 17. And the whole organizational paradigm is worse and not better. Depending on what you personally emphasize in photos. For me it’s albums/recent, then albums/shared. I don’t care about the library specifically until I’m hunting something far older than recent.

 

[dburkhanaev]

Well I unabashedly love it. It is sleeker and slicker and smarter. I don’t get all the hate and think maybe people just don’t like change. I like that it takes more advantage of the hardware (I think?). I also liked the bordered photo presentation which they took away. I think people just need to get used to it and will like it.

The UI needs some serious tweaks to make it useable.

 

[Algr]

If the user interface is good, users will be confident and willing to try new things... including the competition! By making the interface terrible (like dos/window) they can keep their customers traumatized and fearing change. Thus they will keep buying the same product line and not try new things.

 

[redheeler]

I don’t need to be told what my photos are of if I can see them right in front of me, nor do I need to be reminded of past events unless I’m in the mood to go look at them, so the classic grid view is where I spend most of my time…I haven’t tried iOS 18, has this been kept?

 

[0423MAC]

The initial iteration of Safari with the bottom address bar, many people seem to have disliked, including me... Apple seemed to have received enough feedback to make some minor changes to make it what it is now... I believe the bottom address bar should have been introduced in iOS 8 back in 2014 when the iPhone 6 series was announced... I don't like the change done this late but I seem to have accepted it and live with it...

That iOS 18 Photos app, what was Apple thinking? Is there no other way to add functionality to a tried and tested design? I am hoping that they will revert to the iOS 17 and older look, but at the same time, I am expecting that they will push with the iOS 18 redesign, no matter how hated it gets... Maybe, just like the changes in Safari, Apple will make changes that will take into account the feedback of the customers and those who are brave enough to use iOS 18 beta on their main device or on a daily basis...

The address bar on browsers should always be at the bottom by default for touchscreen devices. Once I got used to it on Windows Phone I knew it was the right call all those years back.

 

[gank41]

The address bar on browsers should always be at the bottom by default for touchscreen devices.

No way! Most folks are used to it at the top. Whether you specifically prefer it that way or not.

 

[Ipadonly1]

I don’t need to be told what my photos are of if I can see them right in front of me, nor do I need to be reminded of past events unless I’m in the mood to go look at them, so the classic grid view is where I spend most of my time…I haven’t tried iOS 18, has this been kept?

Meh. I agree with you and you can kind of do this on iOS 18, but it forces memories, trips and days on you more on iPadOS18

 

[krspkbl]

The more I've used it the more I hate it. What a mess.