iOS 18.0.1 Update Ruined Photos App

I just recently updated my iPhone 15 pro to the latest iOS 18.0.1), and it has made the photos app dysfunctional and entirely unusable. I use my photos app every day and heavily rely on quick, easy access through visual organization for my many folders and albums. But the new update has alienated me from my own photos I’ve spent countless hours organizing.

This update not only removed the focus on albums, but I can’t even navigate through this new layout at all. I honestly can’t use the app as it is now. I used to be able to find any of my photos within seconds, but now I can’t find them at all if they aren’t recently added items.

There are certainly new features that are helpful in some aspects for other customers. I know the customize and reorder settings is at the bottom to make things “easier” for some, but it doesn’t change the fact I can’t navigate my own photos I’ve had for years. As a user who primarily organizes photos with albums and folders, the added features such as recent days, trips, and memories are useless to me. And I know I can deselect these categories from showing personally, but that still doesn’t change the fact the albums and folders have been altered in a way that is uniformly inefficient and confusing.

I’m asking if there’s way to revert back to the old format or at least change the format/look of the albums like they used to be: enlarged icons in groups of four. A vertical list of tiny icons and names is useless to me. Period.

I genuinely don’t know what to do because this update has ruined my ability to use and navigate the app. I’ve played around with all the new settings but I can’t find a way to fix the album and folder layout to be functional again.

-The one thing that has kept me as an Apple customer is the easy and visually clean user interface. But the drastic change in the way the photo app functions and the inability to return to what has worked for me for years, makes me question future purchases with Apple products if this issue is left unresolved with future iOS.