Unable to navigate my photos in the Photos app on my iPhone after iOS 18.1.1 update

Recents shows items in date added order. In the previous version of photos it would include everything in your library in date added order. You can effect the same sort by dragging your library down until you get the icon to sort (up and down arrows) to sort by recently added or date captured.

KerryM2024 wrote: … What can be done?

Play with it a bit. Especially, look at the customization options. The interface looks like they threw everything on the screen at once (which they nearly did!) but they gave us "Customize & Reorder" at the bottom so that we could cut out the things we didn't want to see. And they gave us Pinned so we could have one place to put the things we do want to see. Once you get command of the options, it's pretty cool.

Additional…. I fixed it.

I saw a message on Flipboard about apple Intelligence, what I do not have, on 18.3. This led me to the settings for Siri.

Over there I switched off and on again all settings belonging to siri and shortcuts. And now it works again.

Slightly odd… but I am happy again concerning this point.

Many of the views are "curated", i.e. the app decides which photos you want to see and only shows you them when you first open the view. In Recent Days, having selected a day, you have to press the button at the bottom, where you can choose to see all pics and remove the Preview. These preferences don't stick, so you have to do it every time you choose the day. Every. Single. Time.

This is an extremely well written and 100% accurate explanation of the problem that many of us are experiencing with Photos in iOS18. Suggestions such as "learn to use the new App" are not helpful, as the problem appears to be that the basic functionality of the App has been completely changed.

I have thoroughly examined all of the options and filters in the new Photos App and have confirmed that there is no way to separate synced photos from snapshots taken on the iPhone. There are all jumbled together in one huge "library" consisting of thousands of thumbnail images. This radical change to the functionality of Photos may work for persons who take and store a few hundred images on their iPhone but has rendered the App completely useless for those of us who take a lot of photos with other cameras and move photos between a Mac and an iPhone for editing, organization, sharing, etc.

Unless and until the prior functionality of the Photos App is restored, the only solution appears to be to use a third-party Camera App for images taken on the the iPhone. I would be interested in learning if anyone has found a better solution to this problem.

The latest iOS was released recently, 18.2.1, so you should try that first. It had some bug fixes and improvements.

muguy wrote:

Recents shows items in date added order. In the previous version of photos it would include everything in your library in date added order. You can effect the same sort by dragging your library down until you get the icon to sort (up and down arrows) to sort by recently added or date captured.

As I - and others -have written many times - the old Recents only showed photos which were on the Camera roll in the camera app. i.e. pictures taken with the iphone camera which had not been deleted from the device. It's nothing to do with sorting or arranging or customizing . None of the views in the new Photos displays only what's on the Camera roll.

To help you understand how I use my phone and photos this is what I do. Lets say I take some pics of a dustbin with my phone. Then I take some wedding photos with my phone. I'll need the dustbin pics sometime but I want to add the wedding pics to my IM app on my Mac. I download the wedding pics to my Mac, delete them from my phone, put them in a folder, process them with my IM app to add dates, people, cars, continents, countries, counties, towns, animals, geographical features, hotels, etc. then synch them with my iPhone using Finder. In the old Photos app if I looked in Recents I'd only see the dustbin pics, so when I need them they'll be easily accessible and then I can just delete them. The wedding pics were gone from Recents and they appeared in the "From My Mac" view. That's exactly want I want to see. Today, if I do the same thing then there's no easy way to see just the dustbin pics. Recent Days will contain the wedding pics. The library will contain the wedding pics. Sure, I can get to the iPhone pics eventually, but if I've taken 2000 pics in the last 6 months and I'm looking for one wine label pic taken with the phone and can't remember the month it's a lot of effort for something I used to be able to do with one click. Also, if I only take one pic of the dustbin or wine label then it will never appear in Recent Days because ...well who knows.

The ability to only see pics taken with my phone that are still on my phone but not in the From My Mac section is very important to the way I, and many of the people complaining, use photos. That capability has gone - unless you can tell me how to do it. All the views now include every picture on the phone and don't differentiate between pics taken with the phone and pics synched from my mac. As I've said in an earlier post, I can't comprehend that anyone can use Photos without the functionality that used to exist in Recents. For me it's little better than someone scattering all my photos in a big pile on the floor. It makes Photos just a viewer for me - and a pretty poor one at that. You appear to use Photos very differently from me - which is fine but if you don't understand how I use it I don't see how you can give advice about it. The problems I'm having aren't about sorting or selecting or customizing or learning how the app works.

I know I'm stuck with it and I've got a couple of work arounds for my use-case but you need to stop telling people that the new Photos can do what the old Photos can because it's not true.

I came up with an answer that works for me. I created a folder on my pc called empty. I sync'ed my phone to that folder. Now my only pics on the phone are in the "recents" folder.

I uploaded all my other folders with pics to DropBox. I can access them from there by folder and not merged into my recents.

Interesting point, I used one of my apps to unload "recents" to folders along the way. It still sees all the pics the way it USED to be. So Apple changed the APP NOT the way the pics are stored.

They could easily undo what they did...they are choosing to not do it. Guessing customers like us don't have enough influence.

Tiredgigworker wrote:

I agree. I use my iPhone for my job, but I'm asking them to switch to android interface. If I can't search my photos using location, my iPhone is pretty much useless. I've also had trouble emailing photos that have been shared with me via iMessage; the option to add to Photos or email to a person is no longer an option when you press on the photo or video in iMessage. Since my job is to document activities at several different locations, not being able to search my photos makes me very frustrated.

You can search by location in the search bar (provided, of course, that you have granted photos access to location) just like always. You can also share photos from iMessage. Tap on the photo, then the share icon.

Tap "search."

Enter the date.

As I understand it, after removing aka "customizing" at the bottom, "All Photos" has no structure at all for easy access to a certain date, so it does not suffice for large curated collections, particularly ones where location, month, day, and a sequence of intentionally related photos have been sorted. I read reviews and blocked the upgrade beyond 17.7.2. My many year set is a research collection as I am sure are others. Search by Day is a critical tool. Recent Day is not useful over time or necessary. Month and Day is not enough. So 18.1.1 Photos is not customizing.

Monuments. Archaeology sites with walls of varied heights (three stones make a wall), metal dig finds sorted by site and location and day (some jewelry, some not), frescoes sorted by city, church, chapel (Italy inserts names down to chapel automatically - is that removed?), sequences of photos from museums with the photo next to the image to retain the information, buildings with a photo of the floor plan and layers of excavated plans, etc.

Consider the citizen scientist. Rare bird report, Great White Shark report, cold stunned turtle, invasive species, report, etc. many of which are sent to the state or federal government. Some photos have legal implications where location, month, date are court references.

Small businesses have portfolios of work. Small towns have working committees whose photos support decisions with financial implications. It goes on.

I have in the past worked in and with photo archives and cannot tell you how important the location and day issue can be.

I just went to the formal Apple product response page with suggestion that I will pay extra for the original (now 17.7.2) version of Photos with Library, All Photos, Years, Months, Days Albums, search, and the sync button. Recently in Europe that sync button was key and still not enough as iCloud access was not 100% even after a successful sync.

Kills me as I had ordered new devices and was set to order more when 18.1.1 hit. Not so sure if I will keep them.

I hope these thoughts prompt others to provide more suggestions than "play with it a bit" with all due respect to Richard.

MuGuy said "That's how photos has always worked. All of your photos are in the library."

That's not how photos has always worked. Prior to this the Recents folder contained only photos taken with the iPhone camera and none of the pics synched with mac appeared there. There's no way to separate them any more.

Muguy said "And, you can view photos by date in recent days."

Nope. You can only review photos by date in Recent Days if you took 4 or more photos on those days. If you took less than 4 photos on a day then, for some unfathomable reason, that day doesn't appear in the Recent Days collection.

Zurarczurx wrote:

Muguy said "And, you can view photos by date in recent days."

Nope. You can only review photos by date in Recent Days if you took 4 or more photos on those days. If you took less than 4 photos on a day then, for some unfathomable reason, that day doesn't appear in the Recent Days collection.

You can view them by date in Library.

muguy wrote:

Recents remains. Everything is still there.

Nope. Recents used to show only photos taken with the iPhone camera that had not been deleted from the phone. That functionality is nowhere to be found. So no, Recents does not remain and whilst all the pics might be "there" the ability to separate pics taken with the phone and not deleted from the phone from pics transferred to Mac, deleted from the "camera roll" and synched back to the phone from Mac is definitely not still there.

I understand that Photos has changed and that there's probably no way to go back, but you need to stop telling people that key functionality that they used to use - i.e. Recents - is still there. It isn't