Ok guys I think most of us agree the photos app has become almost unusable since iOS18. Well try the below and see if this helps you. In theory it should make it back to how it was before with the latest photos at the top.
Click on photos. Click customise and reorder. Then swipe through all the options. Deselect every one except for media types and utilities. Then hit close. Should be sorted.
By Lee, 2 April, 2025
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
this didn't work
Hi Lee,
Unfortunately it didn't work for me. My photos are exactly the same, with the oldest at the top. I tried sorting by recently added and date captured but nothing worked. I tried opening and closing the photos app in the app switcher and then reopening it again but still the same. Thanks for the info though. It was worth a try.
For Tara
Sorry Tara, I don't really use the photos app much at all. Just came across that "hack" and in it they said make your app like it was before. So, I wrongly assumed that new photos would always be at the top. Having said that it does declutter the screen which presumably does make it slightly easier to find what you want. But a bit of a duff post by me, me thinks lol.
Good to switch off some of the noise
I never spend very long in the photos app but it is useful to be able to turn off some of the rubbish that's put in there so the tip above was useful.
If I go to Library then it seems to show me photos for the last few months with oldest first.
If I select a media type, or album or anything from utilities then it does seem to put the newest ones first. There is a Recently Saved link in utilities which may do the trick. It had a lot in it, possibly everything.
Curiously there is a mysterious hidden album under utilities that needs my face to unlock but has nothing in it.
thoroughly disappointed with the new photos app
Subject line says it all. I wonder how far back the 'recently saved' thing takes you though. I want my photos like before, the most recent at the top, and going backwards in descending order through all my photos, not just from the last few months. I don't have many photos but still. For my user preferences, this is the worst thing Apple have done on the iPhone.
@mr grieves
The hidden album is literally that. You can choose to put photos in there that you don’t want in your main library and that require extra security to view.
Similar idea to the hidden apps feature.
@Dave Nason
OK that's actually a really neat feature - I never knew something like that existed. Thanks for the info.
Maybe not quite as exciting as my conspiracy theory brain had come up with, but a genuinely useful feature.
And @Tara - I don't disagree with you, it was a much better app before. When I go to recently saved it says I have 1,300 ish which sounds like it might be everything.
The original post suggested using media types but I find that is not great - I get videos, live photos, screenshots etc but if I add these up they come to a lot less. I don't think any photos I take with my Meta Ray-bans are counting here.
I hope there isn't going to be a trend of apps that presume that with AI they know better than what we do about how we use an app.
Last to first
Not exactly how it used to be earlier, but one way to have all photos in a sequence is to first double tap the Library button, then, from the bottom, start swiping towards left to find all the photos in the new to old sequence. Slide the scroll bar at the bottom down to 100 per cent before swiping leftward.
Is it any easier?
My question to all of you is this: Has the Photos app redesign made it any easier for blind people to locate specific photos in their library?
I know we're all struggling just to get the same interface we once had. But that's more of a someone-rearranged-the-furniture issue. Set that aside for a moment, and instead consider whether any of the recent changes have made it easier to locate a photo.
In my recollection, the only Apple innovation that genuinely helped me use the Photos app was image descriptions. As a blind person, I use Photos rarely and only have a handful on my phone. Yet image descriptions is enough to help me identify each one.
I'll tell you what I could really use help with. Suppose I attend a large group event, and someone uses my phone to take a group photo with me in the picture. I'd really love some automated way to get a list of the names of everyone in the photo. The only way I can do that is to rely on someone sighted.
So, if there's anything new in the Photos app that's actually useful to a blind person, let me know what it is.