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The redesigned Photos app has undeniably been one of the most controversial changes Apple introduced with iOS18. I can’t get the hang of the redesigned interface despite using it for a while. These are the flaws that stand out.
1Cluttered Interface
While Apple typically rolls out subtle updates to the Photos app, iOS 18 completely overhauled the app’s interface. Previously, the app’s main screen was divided into the following tabs:Library,For You,Albums, andSearch.
With iOS 18, Apple ditched the tabbed layout, and the Photos app has now been unified into a single view separated into two different parts—the main photo grid and Collections. The latter includes categories like People & Pets and Recent Days, straight out of the old For You tab.
To access either section, you’ll need to swipe up or down, depending on which section you’re currently in.
While this change is intended to reduce the time you spend searching for a picture or video in your gallery, I feel like the Photos app has become more cumbersome. The tabbed layout was much simpler to navigate.
For example, I used to easily switch between a photo in my library and one in an album without having to scroll up and down. Now, if I switch to a specific album and then return to my library, I lose my spot and have to scroll all the way back to where I was. The new single-page layout means that your scroll resets every time you change contexts.
While some may be a fan of the all-in-one screen organizational structure, it’s too chaotic for my liking. While you candeclutter the Photos appby customizing the layout to suit your preferences, the unified one-page view is here to stay.
2Images and Videos Are Sorted By Date Captured
Before iOS 18, photos and videos appeared in your library based on when you saved them to the Photos app. When my friends sent images to me via AirDrop, I noticed that the images I received weren’t showing up at the end of my timeline like they used to. Instead, they were scattered throughout my older photos, based on when they were originally taken, making them much harder to find.
For days, I couldn’t figure out what was going on until I realized that the Photos app now sorts images by date captured by default. Fortunately, this is easy to fix, but it was one of the main reasons I wanted to downgrade to iOS 17 for days and why I grew to dislike the redesigned Photos app.
If you haven’t figured out how to fix this yet, all you need to do is scroll through your library, tap thesortingicon once it appears, and selectSort by Recently Addedfrom the context menu.
3Video Playback Is Far From Perfect
Previously, when you navigated through videos by dragging your finger across the timeline, a preview of the frames would appear, giving you a visual indication of where you were in the video. It was a neat way to find specific moments in longer videos without having to watch the whole thing.
Strangely, Apple removed the preview scrubbing feature in the redesigned Photos app.
Now, the only way to scrub frame by frame is by using the trim tools. Additionally, when you open a video in your gallery, it doesn’t play in full screen by default. So, you have to tap it to view it in full screen. Annoyingly, you can’t scrub through a video when it’s in full screen, which I find quite inconvenient.
Videos also play on a loop now, and there have been times when I’ve watched a short video multiple times without even realizing it. While these may seem like minor annoyances, they can be really frustrating for anyone who spends a lot of time watching and managing videos in the Photos app.
4Some Albums Are Difficult to Locate
As someone with tens of thousands of images and videos anda habit of not deleting old photos, I filter images I want to access quickly later or post on social media into myFavoritesalbum.
Before iOS 18, you could find theFavoritesalbum by switching to theAlbumstab. However, after updating to iOS 18, I couldn’t find the Favorites album right away. The same happened when I tried to locate a screenshot I took but couldn’t find the Screenshots album either.
I gave up on finding it for a while and used theSearchicon at the top to locate it. I then realized that a few albums that used to appear in the Albums tab are now under Pinned Collections.
While you may modify your Pinned Collections, the bottom line is that some albums are still difficult to locate in the redesigned layout.
In my opinion, the Photos app redesign is a prime example of change for the sake of change. I can only hope that Apple makes the interface easier to navigate in future iOS updates.
