Can’t search photo albums in iOS 18

Below procedure worked for me so try this:

“The detection process requires iPhone to be locked and connected to power. Depending on what tasks are running in the background and the size of your photo library, the process could happen quickly or take up to a few days to complete”

I was wirelessly charging my iPhone 16 Pro for over 2 weeks and the photo search function still wasn’t working. After coming accross the above information, I used my usbc charging cable and physically charged the phone overnight twice in a row, the search function started working the next morning. So I guess the phone does require to be physically connected to power in order for the phone to learn your large photo library. Hope this helps.

Some of you may have discovered by now that you CAN search for Albums, it just requires more steps and effort on your part. When you execute a search, click the “See All” link upper right corner and scroll down to Albums and you’ll see any Albums that meet your search criteria.

In addition, if you scroll all the way to the bottom in Photos, you’ll see a new option titled, “Customize & Re-order”. Click the option and you can move things around to customize how your photo screen is presented to you ongoing. I moved Albums to the top so I can find them easily.

It’s still not as user-friendly as it was before, and it’s ridiculous that they hid it like this, but at least the option is there.

Favorites are still a real pain to find. Multiple extra keystrokes and easily disappear if you move your finger wrong. Unbelievable that they made these terrible changes.

Below procedure worked for me so try this:

“The detection process requires iPhone to be locked and connected to power. Depending on what tasks are running in the background and the size of your photo library, the process could happen quickly or take up to a few days to complete”

I was wirelessly charging my iPhone 16 Pro for over 2 weeks and the photo search function still wasn’t working. After coming accross the above information, I used my usbc charging cable and physically charged the phone overnight twice in a row, the search function started working the next morning. So I guess the phone does require to be physically connected to power in order for the phone to learn your large photo library. Hope this helps.

Mine ended up taking 3 to 4 days to completely índex (?)

At first it would find only a few albums, the next day it would find more, but not in any order I could discern, though it did seem to index the albums with real word names before the ones named with my shorthand.

Since then it has worked fine and can find every album

if you have a massive amount of albums it may just take a while?

All I can say is that mine took 3 to 4 days before I could find all of my albums searching by the album name.

I mentioned indexing as it seemed like it was doing just that, sorting everything so that it could later be searched easily.

Indexing is the process by which a computer system organizes and records the locations of files and their contents to facilitate faster search and retrieval.

It took 3-4 days and then they all became searchable.

I didn’t do anything but wait.

Hope that helps.

Ok I just found that I had the same problem but have found the answer now , open the photos app and scroll down to pinned collections , there is a modify button . Press it that will open a page where you can add albums and other catorgories back into the pinned collections enabling you to see your albums from there 👍🏻

After a few days, I discovered that my iOS 18 gallery can search by album names, but it takes a few days for the albums to sync before they become searchable by name. Hopefully, Apple can fix this to make the syncing process faster.

CORRECTION:

It appears the "Search" function is available, but only when you're looking at the default (Home page) of the photos app (all your photos).

But if you try to add a selected photo or photos to an album there's no "search" or "alphabetical order" option to find the album (you have to scroll through every album to add that photo??) NOT User friendly or innovative.

You need to rename your album (just add . for the last word) it really takes time but it work for me, i have like 500 hundreds of Album

People please check again.

Mine started working after 3 days or so post iOS 18 install.

I have a lot of albums, as most people likely do, and it appears it must have been doing some kind of indexing/cataloguing (something like that? I’m not an IT guy)

Mine works now

Check again

For me, the search for albums, is not broken, just sometimes very, very slow.

When I am searching for an album by name, I now have to type the complete name of the album into the search field, otherwise it will not be found instantly. That is cumbersome, as my album names are long and descriptive and it is a lot of typing, and I have to remember the full name.

For example, I can find the album "2024_10_11_Provence_Tag_06_Luberon" quickly, when I enter the full name into the search, but not, when I enter just the start of the album name. When I just search for "2024_10" I have to wait for a quarter of an hour, until I am seeing a list of all album names starting with this prefix, and I have to tap the button "Show All", or I will only be seeing some of the 14 collections as a search results.

My library is not very large, just 70000 items, and it is not using "Optimize iPhone Storage", all photos and videos have been downloaded in full to the iPhone, so the search could be faster, like before.

I figured it out. Don’t fret, Albums has not gone away. It’s just buried about 3 levels down in the photo/ camera app.

It took me 10 minutes, but you can reorganize photo/camera to list albums in an easily accessible location.

Here’s how to do it.

1) Open Photo App

2) Click on image in lower left corner

3) Click on “All Photos” in upper right corner

4) Click on “X” in lower right corner

5) Scroll all the way to the bottom and click “Customize and Reorder”.

6) Click on the 3 bars to the right of Albums and drag it to the top and then click “X”.

7) Now when you open the Photo or Camera app scroll up slightly and you’ll see your albums.

Enjoy!!

Thank you! The problem we are all having is not being able to search for our albums using a search bar by just putting in a key word. They removed the search bar for the albums and we are left only using the main search bar and if you don't put the exact name of your album there, you want find it. Many of us have a huge library of photos and enormous amounts of albums as that is how we organize our content.