Albums missing or moving in iOS 18 photos app

I finally found the fix that works, in fact once you get used to it I am finding it easier than the old setup although I do still wish they would sort new photos to the top and let you choose to put the From My Mac (PC users don't let that throw you, you'll still be using that section), and Pinned Collections at the top rather than the bottom but at least the phone remembers where you were as I will explain later. So things are back in folders and I can easily find things now...

Here are the steps;

1. First off, VERY IMPORTANT Because this procedure will delete photos from your phone in a later step before putting them back in the correct folders so you need to back them up first. So with that said, Connect your phone to your PC or Mac, load iTunes and Sync so you have copies of everything on your phone. OR an Alternate way that I actually prefer is just connect the phone to my Windows PC and it appears under the File Explorer and I just go in and manually select them all (sometimes is multiple folders) and select Cut and then Paste them back on my hardrive in the folder(s) where I want them.
2. Open Photos. Scroll to the Bottom and Select "Customize & Reorder".
3. Once inside the Customize & Reorder Uncheck everything except "From My Mac" and "Pinned Collections"
4. Use the three bars on the right side of the List to Drag them so From My Mac is at the top and Pinned Collections is the next one down. Both checked and everything else not checked.
5. Hit the (X) in the upper right corner to exit and save.
6. Now you should have two things showing below all the pictures in your Library, these two things may still be empty but that's OK we will fix that in a moment.
7. Beside Pinned Collections press the "Modify" button which will open the options for Pinned Collections.
8. Inside of the Pinned Collections selections Add "Recently Saved", "Videos", "Recently Deleted", and "Hidden" and use the three bars to drag them so they are in that same order top to bottom and nothing else is selected. Note that there are other things in this list which you may find useful for your particular prefences but for now just stick with these four and you can easily come back and experiment with the other options later once you get the hang of how the new system works and sorts stuff.
9. Press the (X) in the top right corner to save and exit.
10. Connect your phone to your computer and load iTunes.
11. Inside of iTunes go to "Photos" on the left side and select it. The UNselect "Sync Photos", and tell your phone to Sync. This will remove all your photos from the phone (now you know why it was important to Sync it earlier so you don't loose anything.
12. After it has finished Syncing all your photos should now be removed from the phone.
13. If you need to this is the time to make sure your photos and videos on your PC or Mac are sorted into folders the way you want them.
14. Now Re-Check the "Sync Photos" and Select the Folders you want to Sync and also check Include Videos and then press the Sync button and let it work.
15. When it's finsihed Press the Done button and disconnect your phone.

Your photos and videos should now be arranged back in the folders the way you had them ordered on your PC or Mac when you load the photo app and scroll to the bottom. All your folders will appear under the From My Mac section, Videos should be in Videos in the Videos window under Pinned Collections, and when you take new photos on your phone they will appear in the Recently Saved window. As you delete things they will show up in the Recenely Deleted window and if you choose to hide any files they will be in the Hidden window which needs a Password or face ID to open, same as the recently deleted.

It seems odd they made new photos appear at the bottom of the Library and YES, That massive collection of photos will still appear when you open photos but I discovered iOS 18 does REMEMBER where you was in the collection, even if you closed photos by swiping up or have restarted the phone, So if you've scrolled all the way to the bottom where your new photos will appear, along with your From My Mac and Pinned Collections and leave it there, then the next time you open it then it will still be there and you will not have to scroll thrugh all of your photos to get back to the bottom of the list each time you open Photos.

Hope this helps!

Laurelsart wrote:

Please, please please Give us 17 back.

No one participating in this user-to-user forum can do that. Apple doesn't read here for feedback or suggestions. However, you can let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Apple did make some changes in Photos with the release of iOS 18.2 that certainly appear to be based on feedback. Have you updated? It is, however, almost entirely unlikely that Apple will ever entirely revert.

I found all my Albums by clicking on the word ‘Albums. Then they ALL appeared in a list - even those not showing when you go through the images, as shown in this screenshot.

Yes, and have spoken with others from work and everyones photos are now just an unorganized jumble, no albums even after re-syncing with iTunes where you select albums, and the sort by date and sort by recently added has things way out of order, shows me things as "Added this week" which I know are from 2018 and shows dates on things as being 2021 that I just took 2 months ago in 2024. They even put the few options there are at the BOTTOM of the screen so you have to scroll down thru 5000 photos to get to it and when you do, it still does not work! ...Whomever at Apple thought this was a good idea for the design of the new photo app is going to be loosing customers if they don't get this mess fixed quick. Me and others are warning people if you haven't updated to iOS 18 then do not do it because it will screw up your photos so you can't find anyting and I know people who have now cancelled their pre-order of the iPhone 16 to wait and see if they fix this because they know it will have this messed up iOS 18 on it and their photos are important to them and some of us need them for work where they are sorted into their proper albums so when we get a call from a customer who needs a schematic we can quickly look up the model number of their device (folders named for model numbers) and find and text them the info they need. For days now I have been just scrolling thru this mess trying to find stuff and finally have to tell people I will find it when I get home and email it. But then they're upset because I can't text it to them right then like I have always been able to do in the past but it's because in 5000+ pictures of schematics and product info, I can't FIND anything in this hot mess they turned the photo app into in iOS 18. I also know people now trying to figure out how to go backward to iOS 17.7 again.

I have had the same issue since Friday. I have spoken to 6 different Apple techs and nothing. We have even restored the phone's ios 18 software, and still the same issue. Albums are not showing on the iPhone, but are clearly in iCloud, on my MacBook Pro and on my iPad. We have even tried setting up the phone from the iPad and that didn't work. If you sync the phone to the Mac the albums appear, but as soon as you turn IcLoud sync back on, they disappear. And now I noticed that RCS isn't working, but it was on Friday night. This has been a complete nightmare! The only thing that may have worked is if I had kept my iPhone 14 and reset it using the iPhone 14, but of course, I turned it in for the $500 trade in value already. If anyone can get a solution, please post!

The Utiful Photo Organizer app is a quite good alternative because it a) is very easy to use, b) allows you to move photos out of the camera roll to separate folders, so that the photos disappear from the camera roll (yay!), and c) lets you sync your photo folders between your iOS devices.

First off Sync your phone so you have all photos including from iCloud, back them up to the computer per the instrucvtions. Then you have to go into iCloud settings on your phone, turn off iCloud Syncing and then sync your phone with iTunes. Then do the steps, and only after they are finished come back and turn iCloud Sync back on and resync using iTunes. Then iCloud will update to match the phone. Those steps actually haven't changed. It's always kinda been a few steps to get iCloud to follow the phones priority so just use the same steps you've always used in that situation.

OK, A quick web-search turned up this (and that's the checkbox/switch) I was reffering to earlier but this details the steps....

To force photos TO iCloud FROM your iPhone, You'll need to:

Open the “Settings” app on your phone.

Tap your name at the top of the settings page, and select iCloud.

On the iCloud page, select “Photos” at the top of the list.

Toggle the “iCloud Photo Library” switch to the on position.

Once this is active, your photos will begin to upload to iCloud.

You must also make sure your iPhone is connected to Wi-Fi and to Power.

On mine it was turned on so I turned it OFF before I sync'ed with iTunes after making the changes to the photo settings that I mentioned which got my photos on the phone, and then I turned this back on after everything was on the phone and it did not erase them from my phone, it just started sending them to the iCloud in the new folders (which was actually my old folders but now was on my phone).

I have good news! After 2 weeks of being in perpetual "sync mode", last night my photos finally fully synced. It took 1 day to fully optimize after they fully synced, and now my photos app is back to normal. I have albums and people back!!! I read somewhere that it could take weeks to fully sync. I did not want to believe that since I have really good upload and download speeds, but I guess it was true... In any event, I am happy that it fully resolved itself.

Bullshark1 wrote:

This is falling on deaf ears here. Although many may agree with your sentiment , you are preaching to the choir and Apple doesn't look at these threads. I did the same thing and it is useless. Your 81 up-votes are unfortunately also useless except for blowing off smoke and disappointment.

You can let Apple what you'd like to see here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Moving Albums in IOS 18.1 does not work 90% of the time.

when you release the album it looks like it’s going to be in the new location then it disappears.

when I check the old location, there it is.

It’s terrible that it doesn’t work almost all of the time. Clearly Apple has zero testing or QC in their dev org

Also, why can’t you create a new album for selected photos within a nested folder like you used to? It’s totally unintuitive to have to create one at the top level of directories only to not be able to move the new album into a nested folder because the move function fails most of the time

I have bought more Apple products than anyone I know (at least 50 computers) and these OS updates keep getting worse

Google is way better at adding features to Android

I have a similar problem. I have had a library of over 20,000 photos. I was able to browse by location and open up picture collections from a specific geographic area by zooming in and finding it on the maps, the album was called something like "by location...". It was great and all of my pictures were organized that way, from all over the world over 20+ years. But as soon as it upgraded to iOS 18, that stopped working. Now when I browse the map and open a location, it opens up empty as if there were no pictures at all. Extremely frustrating. I contacted apple support and they had the typical "reset everything" solution (which I did, and spoiler alert - it didn't change anything).

On top of that, the layout of the new photos app is cluttered, cumbersome and just a bad design all around. There is nothing that I like about it. In contrast the iOS 17 photos app was great and reliable for years. So frustrating.

Dear Apple: "if it's not broke, DON'T fix it"

This is certainly a quick fix if you need your albums immediately. Unfortunately, once yo go back to syncing with iCloud, all your albums disappear again. If you plan to never sync with iCloud, this is certainly a fix. But for those of us that take many photos and create many albums, this is not a plausible fix I have over 200 albums and all my "People" albums are gone too. Apple certainly needs to look into this and fix this. My photos have been stuck at "syncing..." since 9/20/24. Today is 9/29/24 and 8 Apple techs later, no answers....

I sync with iCloud and mine didn't disapear again. After you sync with your PC or Mac but before you sync with iCloud again you have to tell it to give priority to the phone over iCloud, it's a checkbox somewhere. Sorry I don't remember where but it's there... Another way is to delete your photos from iCloud (make sure they was backed up to the phone and synced with computer or mac first) and then when you do the setup and sync with iCloud it will put all your stuff on iCloud back in the order you had them on your PC or Mac same as the phone did.

I personally don't care if they do or not, it all depends on if they want their albums back like they was before or if they want to hold out hope that Apple changes their mind (which might never even happen) and that their wait is not in vain. Or they could spent 10 mins to do what it takes to fix it now and move on.

You sound like me though with your layout and needs; I have 5000+ photos (not counting personal ones) of technical info sync'ed from my PC which are organized into albums which are sorted by the model number (in many cases the model number IS the album name) of devices I have designed and/or worked on over the past 25 years and I am on government contract so people can call me if the need technical assistance and I need to be able to go right to the model they're working on, enter that album and then quickly find the schematic, set of instructions, operating steps or whatever to get them back up and running ASAP and I for one simply did not have time to wait to see if Apple decides to fix this or not. While finding the steps was a pain, once you know them (why I posted them step by step in extreme detail) it only takes 10 or so minutes and not I'm actually finding the new layout easier to find things than before. It was just getting it setup right was the part that was a PITA and I was just trying to save others all that trial and error.

But as I said, it's all personal if someone wants to hold out hope that Apple fixes it, or just bite the bullet and fix it themselves and be done. I provided steps on one way that a large number of us now know works, not saying it's the only way but we know this way works for sure for anyone who wants to do it and doesn't have time to play around with it themselves.

A old wise man once said:

"I discovered after many years thinking back on my life that everytime I wished for someone to bring me fish to eat for dinner, that I never once got any fish. But all the times I wished myself out of bed in the morning to go fishing, I never once failed to have fish to eat for dinner that evening."