iOS photos 26 is there anyway to stop the behavior of expanding the image

Great work around, Mark, thank you. This behavior has always been somewhat disappointing as about the only time I have photos that fill the whole screen are when there's some kind of oversized screenshot of text or something. I preferred when (I believe) it used to let you zoom out a bit and it would hold the zoom out, but now it does not. So this workaround is pretty good--although the dynamic island can obscure text at the top of the image.

Alternative Workaround

Here is my work around that I've been using for years:

1. I zoom out using two fingers until I can see the image just as I want to see it.
2. While I'm holding my two fingers on the screen, I take a screenshot.
3. Then the iOS Photos app has the standard dimension screenshot saved in it. And the app displays it so I can see the image as I wanted it in the first place :)

Further Tips

If you have a few photos that were in order, but one of them was oversized, and taking a screenshot means the photos are now out of order, you can duplicate accordingly to force the duplicates to the end of your camera roll. This allows you to do some manual, if tedious, rearranging. (I believe you can also change the date/time of the EXIF data using the Photos app to adjust the order as well.)

I also updated to iPadOS 26 and instantly noticed this. It’s frustrating that there’s no longer a way to view whole photos and prevent the sides from being cropped out, making it practically impossible to see whole photos that are slightly outside of the 4:3 ratio in the Photos app.

This also happens if you manually crop an image that was taken in 4:3. Even if you just crop out one edge, the perpendicular ends of the photo will be cropped out as well when viewing due to this behavior. It makes precision cropping useless, and is especially troubling for screenshots with important text on the edge.

I just found if I rotate my iPad to landscape they don’t crop. Not a good solution for me as I prefer to use the iPad in portrait mode.

Hiii...i am having iphone se 2022. After upgrading to iOS 26 I am also facing same issue. MANY PHOTOS appear zoomed in and right now there is NO way to render these images..it appears cropped and zoomed..its very disturbing

I’m having the same issue on my iPad Pro. Images are blown up to fill the screen. Which pretty much makes the app useless. I want to see the whole image. Not cropped to fit my screen. I can’t even figure out how to open a photo in Preview from the Photos App

Following

I view and edit anamorphic photos on my phone, filling the screen destroys them, always worked fine on other versions of iOS. If anyone finds a way to stop this from happening I'm all ears!

One note I have is it doesn't fill the screen when viewing from a iMessage, it does on Photos and Preview apps

I use mood.camera app to take photos in Xpan aspect ratio and this auto zoom/crop in horizontal preview in iOS photos app is driving me crazy. I need to see whole picture with borders. Xpan photos send in iMessage are looking normal with borders in horizontal.

I just experienced the same thing for the first time since the update to iOS26. Hope an update brings a setting like you mentioned to switch this to default full photo view.