1/15/25
9:00 am

How To Use the Redesigned iOS 18 Photos App

The iOS 18 Photos app has the same features as before, but it puts all collections on one long screen along with your entire library. You can get to whatever section you want by scrolling up or down, and customize what is included.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at how to get around in the new Photos App in iOS 18. 
So after updating your iPhone to iOS 18 you probably notice that there's a new way that the Photos App is organized. Instead of having different modes or screens or pages that you're on, it's now one long scrolling page that shows all of the major ways that you can view your photos. 
For instance, when you start the Photos App you'll probably see your photos here at the top and then as you scroll down you'll see various different ways to look at your photos, like People & Pets, Pinned Collections, Memories, Trip, and so on. When you first see this it could be a little confusing. But in fact it is just one long scrolling screen. The top part of the screen is your Library showing each individual photo. Then below that are all of the different types of collections. When you start, you start right here in the middle and then you would scroll up or down depending upon on what you want to see. Once you realize this is just one long page with everything on it, it's a little easier to figure out where to go. 
So let's start by scrolling up. Your Photos Library is above the middle line here. So as soon as you scroll up you'll just get to more and more of your photos. They are all sorted with the earliest photo at the top and the latest one that you added at the bottom. When you start scrolling up you're going to see these buttons at the bottom here. You'll only see them when you're actually looking at just your photos. When you're looking at your collections here notice how that goes away. It only appears when you're just looking at the Photo Library. Then you can go from All Photos to Months and see everything grouped by month or Years and see everything grouped by year. Then to get into an individual year you would just tap on that year. You can go into Months there and then you would go into your full list, again, but at that particular month. So it makes it easy to actually get to a certain year. Instead of having to scroll all the way up you can just tap Years here and then scroll down, get to a year that you want, tap it, and then get the month that you want, tap that, and now you're at that location in the long list. 
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You can also tap here and then Sort, so instead of by date captured you can sort by Recently Added. You can also Filter. So you can decide, for instance that you just want to see videos or you just want to see photos that you've edited. Also, you have View Options here. So you can zoom in to make the individual photos a little bigger and easier to see. You can zoom out. You can change from squares to Aspect Ratio Grid and back and forth like that. You can also choose whether or not to include screenshots or photos that have been shared with you. So you can get rid of Screenshots there if you just don't want to see them when you look at your library. 
At the top notice you still have the Search button here. You can tap that and then type something to search. You also can tap Select here. This allows you to select individual photos, like that. You can tap and drag to select a whole range. Then you can Trash them. You can tap here and do a variety of different things with them and tap here to Share them in a variety of different ways. You can also tap on your User Icon here and you can see information about your library. You have some more options to choose from here. 
Now anytime, no matter where you are in the list of all your photos, even if you are all the way at the top, you can tap the X button here at the bottom right and it takes you back to that middle point, right here. So you've got your library now above the line and below it you have all the different collections. So the collections you see here are customizable. So you may see something different than what I'm seeing. So, for instance, I've got Recent Days and it shows me days where I've taken photos. I can tap where it says Recent Days and see a longer list of them or I can just scroll through the list horizontally and I can tap on a specific day to see the photos I took on that day. Tap the button at the top left to go back. I can also do the same thing with Albums. So here are all my albums. I can scroll through them horizontally. I can tap where it says Albums and see a list of my albums. This is where I would also create a new album and do other functions. I can change how I view the albums as well. For instance I can view them in a grid here. Then I can continue down. Here's People & Pets. The same kind of functionality here going into each individual one. There are options. I can tap where it says People & Pets to just get a list of all of them instead of scrolling horizontally. 
Now Pinned Collections are other collections. So, you've got things like your Favorites, Recently Saved, Looking at everything on a map, Videos, Screenshots. If you want to change what is in this list you can tap Modify here and you get a whole list of different Pinned Collections. So, for instance, if you don't care about having a specific collection just for screenshots you can remove it here. If you want to add it back, it's right there. You can just tap it and it adds it back. If you want to see in a pinned collection, say, all of your Selfies and maybe your Hidden Album, you can add those and now if you look here you'll see they are in this list. So Pinned Collections is completely modifiable. Next I've got Memories which work the same way. You can do all your memories like that or you can scroll horizontally through them. Tap on one to go to it. You've got Trips which is a kind of a new collection here. It just groups your photos automatically by the trips and you could view them all and you can even look at them by years, like that. Tap on an individual one to go to it, like that. Then I've got Featured Photos, another automatic collection that's created that I can go into. I've got Media Types. So at this point it is just showing you a list but it works the same way. If I want to view, for instance, all of my selfies I tap here and it goes into that just like any other collection. So I've got these four media types here. I can tap here and see there are actually more media types than just the ones there that are listed.
You have Utilities which are even more different collections here for things like Favorites, Hidden, and so on. You can tap on Utilities here and you can see all of them. You can see I don't have any Shared Albums. The last one here is Wallpaper Suggestions. Another automatic category. You can go in and see photos that the app thinks would make a good wallpaper for your iPhone.  
Now, you may look at this and say, well I don't want some of these and other ones I want but I want them further up on the list or further down in the list. Fear not for this is all customizable. At the very bottom you have Customize and Reorder. So you tap that and you are going to see all of these different sections. Remember Recent Days was the first one and then under that was Album. Let's say you like your Albums and you want them to be first. So you're going to drag that there to the top. Maybe after that you want Trips, so you'll drag that one next. Maybe Recent Days isn't something you use. So you could Uncheck that so it won't actually appear. Then remember some of these sections, like Pinned Collections, allow you to Add some of these things to it. So, for instance, I can get rid of, say, Featured Photos from here. Then I can go back into Pinned Collections here and I can add Featured Photos to my Pinned Collection if I want. I can just get rid of all of these and really simplify the page. Notice here it is all about the Library now. Or what may make more sense is to go in here and add Pinned Collections Only and then in Pinned Collections add the things I want just to make the page super simple. 
Now I realize that over the years people had grown used to how the Photos App had organized things and this seems like a major change. But it really kind of simplifies everything by it just being in one long list that you can scroll up and down and customize to be in the order you want with the things that you want shown there. Feature wise you haven't lost anything. You still have all your Albums and the ability to customize your albums as you want. You still have People & Places and all of the other types of sections. You even have some new things as well. For those of us that like their photos to be automatically organized and not have to do it manually, things like Trips and Featured Photos are really nice. But if they are not for you, if you enjoy organizing your things into your own albums, you can certainly keep doing that. All the functionality is still there. You can make Albums the top thing in the list and simply go into Albums every time and ignore all the other features if you like. So, for the most part the iOS 18 Photos App is more customizable than it was before. You just have to maybe take a minute to set it up like you want. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 22 Responses to “How To Use the Redesigned iOS 18 Photos App”

Jim Terrinoni

2 months ago

Excellent! You are so consistent in delivering some nuggets of info that will save us a LOT of time. Just one example: too often I look for a photo by tapping on it, reviewing the date then, scrolling up or down. NOW I think that process will be much faster. Keep up the clear communications and hard work (still boggles my mind how you accomplish all this.)

Andy P

2 months ago

Great info - very helpful! Is there any way to sync albums among all Apple devices (mac, phone, ipad) with my user ID? All devices are using Photos in icloud. If someone else shares an album with me, I can see it on all devices. But if I create an album, shared or not, it is only visible on the device that created it. All OS/software is updated and I've got 1.5TB of icloud space left.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Andy: Yes, that's exactly what iCloud Photos does. Sounds like you don't have it turned on. Check on Mac in Photos, Settings, iCloud. Check on iPhone and iPad in Settings, Apps, Photos.

Andy P

2 months ago

Sorry, that wasn't clear - of course icloud Photos is turned on for all devices; I can see all the photos on all the devices. Shared albums is selected too, on all devices. What I can't see on the mac are *albums* created on the iphone, and vice versa. This includes shared albums.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Andy: You should see the same albums on all devices. They are all using the same Apple ID, correct?

Pavel Tuzov

2 months ago

I love Days layout so much, and in iOS 18 it's gone. This is one of the main reasons I still haven't upgraded my devices to the latest software. I wonder if Apple will bring Days layout back. Do you happen to know any 3rd party applications for Photos app that has Days layout?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Pavel: isn’t the “Recent Days” feature that I mention in the video the same thing?

Linda Deedy

2 months ago

I am finding that the search function in the updated photos does not work for me like the old one did. I need to search by what I have put in the captions section. I am getting only a fraction of what I know is there. Do you have any idea why and what I can do to make it work better for me?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Linda: The search function should work the same as before, with maybe a few more things it can find. What types of things are you search for? I can find things based on dates, locations, people, and objects or concepts in the photos (like "waterfall" or "smile").

Pavel Tuzov

2 months ago

Gary: No, this section was next to months and years views in main library view.

Linda Deedy

2 months ago

I do Zentangle. It has names for patterns, i.e. flux or hollibaugh. When I do a project and take a photo I put the names of the patterns in the captions for easy searching. Let's say I have 50 with "flux" in the caption. I used to get them all to show up. Now, I get maybe 10 to show up. I see 4 options to click on with varying numbers of photos. None of them are what I used to get when I searched. It's just very frustrating.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Pavel: Ok, but did you look at the "Recent Days" section? Does it not work for you? If not, why not? What would you want that is different?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Linda: Not sure why it isn't working for you. If I search for a word in my captions, I get the correct results.

Linda Deedy

2 months ago

I’m not sure why, either. Is there a way to search words in captions only? And not get all the other photos where it finds similar words on a page? That might help.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

LindaL You would type the word and then select from the list that appears under it, so I think an "Aa" is for keywords and a little square with lines inside for image text, not sure what it is for captions. Also, consider using keywords for your situation instead of captions as that may apply more based on your description.

Christine MacDonald

2 months ago

Hi Gary

I went through all of my photo's app and everything looks like yours except no trip photo's are showing in the trips and I have a few, thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 months ago

Christine: it just probably hasn’t identified them as such.

Sheldon

2 months ago

Thanks bunches

Andrea Grasselli

2 months ago

Thank you Gary; this look into the new way of organizing things in Photos is useful for me.

Anne Burke

2 months ago

You really are a gem Gary. Thank you so much for shining a bright light on what was for me a very dark upgrade. Now I understand. Thank you soooo much.

Jim Goddard

2 months ago

Excellent overview of the Photos app and its new features.

Mark McCluski

1 month ago

This is exactly what I needed to get a handle on this! Being one of your subscribers has been so beneficial!