Albums missing or moving in iOS 18 photos app

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.

Apple’s iOS 18 update has completely destroyed my albums. I cannot find a way of even labelling images or videos. It’s just a complete jumbled mess. Apple still hasn’t worked out how to store images and videos alphabetically, we have to do it manually, but now they’ve destroyed this as well. Worst update ever. This is pushing me to abandoning Apple altogether. I make a living with image and video editing. I cannot afford to have Apple destroy my work!

Same happed to me plus other apps won’t open since I downloaded IOS 18.1 you hit an icon it flicks open for 1/2 a second and then closes. I will never update my iPhone again no matter how many red dotes appear on Settings because my next phone will be anything but an Apple, to support this poor excuse of a company and have to deal with their past and present nonsense is over.

I am sick of updating only to find that something I depend on is suddenly lost!! Where are my photo albums?? I spent hours carefully alphabetizing them!! My work depends on this. I am happy to update for security reasons, but I do not want to have to spend hours trying to recover what I put in place. I am angry that Apple is constantly fiddling with my photo file.

I refuse to "upgrade" to IOS 18 because I want MORE control over my photos and their organization, NOT to have the system do it for me. I already hate the "people" "pets" "memories" etc. that are idiotic and impossible to disable. I am a technological idiot but still I may have to find a way of switching mumaccount.

They should definitely revert it I don’t know who came up with this terrible terrible ios18 album modification idea. It’s so darn frustrating using one hour trying to find some trip photos downloaded from my friend’s camera from a year ago only to learn that they seem to be completely disappeared.

Who at Apple makes the decisions such as these horrible changes to Photos? Do they ever go out to regular users to beta test? I can't find any of my albums. Where did the the bottom "strip" view which enabled quick scrolling of photos go?

I have a hundreds of photos of goats and in a search for "goat" or "goats" the app now returns only 42 some of which are pictures of lambs.

I am so sick of these tech companies making "improvements" which utterly change my interface and are then just dumped on us to sort out.

anthonygeo wrote:

What a mess Apple created with this update! Why do they always assume this is what the people want? Why is it so difficult to search Photos now and where the **** are my screenshots going? I even choose save to photos and they are not showing up. The Photos app is a headache now along with the password app. Like who thought a separate app for passwords was a good idea?

Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

koruenxx wrote:

Agreed. Why, Apple, would you mess with people’s memories? Having my family folders, kid’s first day at school, now-dead granparents, etc sorted into MY personal folders is infinitely more important than some AI editing. The AI features should be optional. Everyones long-ago created folders of family love and important moments must be considered untouchable. Please fix ASAP!!

Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

I have certainly provided my feedback. Of course, I told them how much I like the update.

Terrible 18 upgrade based on photo albums …. Missing my albums

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."

I really can’t figure this out. My recent photos just seem to be an upside down endless scroll which starts at the bottom. The shared family album is now below half a page of recent photos. They seem to have thought photos should be added in the same way you add words to a page. It really is one of the worst updates in recent years. I can’t believe there was no negative feedback on this during testing, its a mess. Please revert.

I have also stopped using PC's because they were so fragile and fickle . I went to Apple for simplicity and functionality. Does any body think they are reading this thread and give a hoot? I think they have become too big and forgot us little people. Oh well, maybe Elon will develop a phone and it will just plain work. We can only hope.

The way I understand, Apple doesn’t read these posts . I whined and complained too but it has fallen on deaf ears . I called support yesterday and they said this problem has not been voiced to them . Huh? I have not upgraded to ios 18 yet. Doubt I will .

I updated to iOS 18 and now cannot create shared albums which means I can’t share bulk photos. I’ve tried to create a shared album four times and even though it says “publishing,” it does not. It doesn’t show up in my shared albums and the recipients are not getting the photos. What is going on with this new update?!!!