My relationship with the Photos app on my iPhone is complicated. It’s both my treasure trove of memories and my secret pile of shame. I have thousands of photos of trips, outings, and socializing with loved ones, but thousands more of myself, food, and random internet stuff (tweets, Reddit posts, and crossword puzzle clues). Add to that private photos of things like my tax documents and IDs, and the Photos app probably contains all the most important and sensitive things in my life. I spend hours in it every day. I would be lost without the 73,600 photos and 2,607 videos I have stored there (and the 600GB of my Google Photos, of course; I only switched to iOS two years ago).
So when Apple announced that a redesign was coming to iOS 18 (and iPadOS 18), I was skeptical and worried. Change? I hate it. My fingers already know exactly where the buttons are; having to relearn everything would be a pain. How else would I quickly find the screenshots I need?
The good news is that the redesign of the Photos app in iOS 18 could make it easier to find these items. Better yet, it could allow users to use their albums in the way that best suits their needs. Perhaps those of you who are more utilitarian and less vain could benefit from it, too.
I had a chance to get a closer look at the upcoming changes at WWDC last month. But last week, I got to learn more by chatting with Della Huff, Billy Sorrentino, and Jon McCormack from Apple’s Photos, Design, and Software teams to learn more about why and how the app was redesigned.
What will the redesigned Photos app look like in iOS 18?
At first glance, your photos don’t look much different. As we saw at WWDC 2024, all of your images will still be the first thing you see. But look a little beyond the surface and the changes are obvious. The tabs below your images that say “Library,” “For You,” “Albums,” and “Search” are gone. And instead of your grid taking up almost the entire page, it now ends about two-thirds of the way down, with rows of albums appearing below.
I have to say I was initially annoyed by this change, but once I heard that my entire library was just a swipe down away, I was extremely relieved. Well, mostly, anyway. The bar at the bottom that lets you switch between yearly, monthly, daily, and all views will now show years, months, and everything. This is fine by me, since I rarely use the daily option.
A new filter button at the bottom left lets you choose what to focus on or remove from the grid, such as screenshots, favorites, portraits, videos, and edited images. A sideways swipe will reveal different collections, either generated by your phone or created by you.
The idea is to reduce “endless grid scrolling,” Huff said, referencing an idea McCormack has previously discussed. With more than three trillion photos and videos taken each year, Apple users probably don’t want to spend time sorting through blurry photos or screenshots. Helping them get to what they want faster is a major goal of the redesign.
But like I said, too much change is a pain. Sorrentino said, “It was critical from the beginning of this design process that we didn’t lose any of the key features that people love today.” So far, it seems like the elements I use most frequently are still there or even easier to reach. And while I find it unnecessary for each collection to automatically read like a memory in the redesign, at least it will look good and won’t take up extra space.
When you swipe right on the grid, you’ll see the new photo carousel, which highlights what Apple considers to be your best content. It uses the app’s 15-year-old “device intelligence” that takes into account data like who’s in the photos and where they were taken to create mini-movies of your outings and activities.
Don’t confuse this with Apple Intelligence, though. It’s just algorithms. In fact, McCormack called it “intuition.” For example, he said, “The iPhone knew who my partner was long before I told the iPhone who my partner was.” The team is relying on the same system that identifies faces and generates Memories here, and in iOS 18, it will start surfacing photo sets that include groups of people and pets like you and your parents, your partner and your pet, or you and your partner. There will also be new collections like “Recently Edited” and “a smart receipt album that you can put right at the top with pinned collections,” Huff said.
She noted that in the redesigned Photos app, “there are a number of new dimensions and content types that we’re highlighting, like receipts and documents, handwriting, QR codes and more.” These can lead to more effective and relevant search results to help you explore your library.
How do Apple Intelligence features work in the new Photos app?
Apple Information will The Photos app is getting a few new tools, like cleanup to clear background distractions and text prompts to create narrative memories with storylines. It will also enable “natural language search” that will let you find an image by describing what it contains, so you won’t have to try to remember where or when the event happened, or worse, scroll down the page. It should be as easy as typing “flaming praying mantis with a group of shocked people” instead of searching through hundreds of photos you’ve taken in Las Vegas. However, for that, you’ll need to have at least an iPhone 15 Pro.
During my time with Huff, Sorrentino, and McCormack, I learned that Cleanup works on any image in your Photos app, so you can use it on screenshots or downloaded images, too. McCormack explained that when you use Cleanup on an image taken in Portrait mode, “we clean up the original image and then reapply the depth of field effect.”
Apple is using “three different AI models” to remove background distractions, McCormack said. The first will “understand clutter so when you click on something, we know what to make disappear.” The other two are a “fill model” to replace the hole, and another that will understand “the subject’s segmentation boundaries.” The last will prevent Cleanup from leaving hollows in your subject’s head or accidentally giving them an unflattering haircut.
What can you customize and why is it important?
The new Photos app has a ton of collections, and being able to create and pin them wherever you want makes it easy to access your favorite images. In fact, the entire area below the grid is your playground. “You can organize the structure of the app itself,” Sorrentino said. You can “turn any section of the app on or off” or reorganize it.
My favorite person is myself, so I’ll probably put my best selfies in a collection and that’ll be the one I see first after swiping on the grid. But as part of the collections below the grid, I’ll have the crochet patterns I’ve taken screenshots of as one that I’ll pin to the top, as well as important information that I refer to frequently, like my airline loyalty account numbers.
The beauty of customization in general is how each person can tailor an interface to their individual needs. Maybe you prefer to use Photos a bit like Pinterest, where you can screenshot the car models you’re considering and put them in an album. Or maybe you track your meals, taking pictures of your meals daily to help you plan a menu. Or maybe you keep track of your outfit, your garden, your stamp collection, or your growing child. You can create a collection of the photos you want and pin them.
I haven’t spent any time with the new Photos app yet, so while I’m excited about the promise of customization, I’m reserving judgment. I also like scrolling through my gallery as I reflect on my weekend, because it visually represents my train of thought over the days. Sometimes I use screenshots to remind myself to do something later in the evening, when I inevitably look back at my friend’s cute baby photos. So the idea of letting Apple filter out what it thinks is insignificant isn’t something that appeals to my control freak side. Thankfully, it seems like I can still see all the images in my library.
I’d also like to see how the Cleanup tool works, as well as how well “natural language search” will perform compared to Google’s recently announced Ask Photos tool. And while I don’t create or watch many Memories, I’d be curious to see what a video derived from a prompt like “all my outfits, from athleisure to evening wear” would look like.
iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 are currently available to developers in closed beta, with a public beta expected later this summer. The full version of the new software is expected to be available in the fall, at which point most users will likely receive the redesigned Photos app when they update their iPhones. That leaves a few more months before your fingers relearn where the various features are.