Can’t search photo albums in iOS 18

Update with 18.1.1 and I’m not able to search by date. I get a message “Photos is analyzing your library to provide accurate search results”. A simple search by year yields nothing. Beyond frustrating.

Same here! I have a LOT of photo albums because I take a lot of pictures! I loved being able to do a search and have my photo albums show up. I am VERY disappointed by this change!

if I could at least sort my albums alphabetically, but I can’t even do that!

I hope you’re reading this, Apple! We need an update fixing this ASAP!

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.

I couldn’t agree more with this thread. This must be fixed. Not being able to search for an album name on the albums tab is unacceptable. Spent years organizing photos by albums and can’t believe this is no longer an option? Before I could find photos from albums in seconds, now it is just a disaster searching for albums. Please fix this asap and make the photos app user friendly again!

I just got the Apple pro air for Christmas and didn’t days sorting my photos into albums only to discover I can’t search for them. I can’t believe that a sophisticated IT company like Apple does not have this basic search functionality. How pathetic! I need to be able to find folders for my sheet music and my art! They better get this functioning by the next update. This is ridiculous!

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.

Dear Wes786, your suggestion gives me hope, and I’m going to try it. Thank you!

But would you please give a link to the sentence you quoted, which set you on your winning strategy of long-term charging and mega-patience? I’d love to see what else is available to read at that site!

CraigG59, this sounds amazing! I’m going to try it! But before leaving to do so, I want to say, Thank you! (I probably won’t find my way back here, so I’ll speak up now). How baffling that posts expressing frustration vastly outnumber posts offering solutions. As one of the few who offer the latter, you deserve kudos for taking the time to share your discovery. Even if your recommendation didn’t work for me I’d want to thank you for troubling yourself to share what did work for you! You’re golden!

The same for me. And Captions. I can’t search by any caption that I’ve added to a photo. I use mainly keywords as captions so I can easily find a category of photos and now I can’t. Very frustrating

Im having exactly the see issue. It’s frustrating

Works for me

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