Can’t search photo albums in iOS 18

LIVID. It is now mid-December, and I just updated to iOS 18. I wish to god I had looked into this beforehand, because I simply would not have done it. The loss of searchability by album title is an unacceptable downgrade. Initially, I thought that the albums changing from grid view to a single list with an enormous waste-of-space blank text field was the worst part, but totally breaking the title search is the last straw. I have customized the home page as much as possible, but I can’t make this work. They should have released a fix for this by now, and I will be downgrading if there’s no resolution. What is the point of having album titles if you can’t search the “text” in the title? Professionals use this for their work, and you shouldn’t alienate that audience just because you’re catering to family/event based usage. As others have mentioned, I too have hundreds of albums of projects which are now practically inaccessible without infinite scrolling.

They need to fix this. It’s terrible now. I need to be able to search.

Apple, do something please!

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.

Absolutely right. I have never had any bad experience before. Seems like a jungle. And from now on can not use photos section any more. Can not watch full screen video or stop video on full screen. Always step up down up down. I dont wanna talk about gallery or other things. They add lots of sections but forget to add a section "use your albums like ios 17" Complately horrible....

I am an iPhone photographer and we are also influencers and I organized all my photos and videos in Albums. How insane is it that they took away the feature to search for an Album by name?

This is so unacceptable and disappointing that Apple would release an IOS that is a downgrade. Aren't they reviewing and testing their IOS before release?

What's going on? I just hung up with tech support who indicated that now with this IOS 18 the videos are looping.

SOS - Apple - I hope you are reading this fix these problems NOW!

whoever they hired to write that 18.2 software update needs to be fired asap. it took me deleting most of my app to make space to update the software, and I am highly disappointed. no actually I am ****** off. I use my phone for work, and I create album for clients to access what I need when I need it quicker, and now, I can't search for anything. I have to through my entire gallery to find what I need. that's nonsense. I wish I could get the old software back. apple is becoming more and more ridiculous everyday.

It often happens that users with many albums may notice that some albums appear to be missing when searching by name. However, if you browse through the gallery manually, you’ll find the missing album. If you don’t have many albums, this issue is less likely to occur.

I have stored data and named substansive volume s of albums by name with tag numbers.

Before search by an album name was possible such as album xxx NO.1, album xxx NO.2,album xxx NO.3 etc...

I dont understand why album indexing, has been remove from IOS 17.7.

This lack of functionality makes me consider return the smartphone, it make the photo album application useless.

I dont need AI or fancy function to search albums, or limit the search to individual picture, the concept of album naming is to find them all by keyword, make it simple and efficient.

The previous upgrade took my photo albums out of alphabetical order. I resorted to the search bar and made that work. This iOS 18 upgrade has rendered the search bar useless for retrieving photo albums by their name at this time. I’m hoping there’s an expedited patch coming forth quickly!

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.

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.

How can? Do i have to wait for my photos to be fully optimized?