Albums missing or moving in iOS 18 photos app

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.

Please reverse the 18.01 iOS back to 17 iOS for photos and albums. I’m missing photo albums and when scrolling through photos it freezes up.

I no longer have folders in photos since the update. 😡 my pictures are now in a jumbled mess

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 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!

Big issue here with my iphone 13 mini after the ios 18 update. Till yesterday no issues at all, running smoothly. Later that day i was trying to find a photo from the new photos app and could not find it at all, on the way to my albums i saw that photos and videos have been reduced from 6k to 3.9k without a valid reason because my phone is 128gb and i had a free storage of 71gb, my albums were gone and many important photos were gone as well. I bought Icloud storage thinking that they will appear again(Hope dies last they say) but i was pretty unlucky and they didnt show up. If someone had the same issue and solved it pls reply, for now i have google photos and im not in a rush, but i need to restore them on the device too. Also is there any chance this might get fixed in the next update of 18.1?

This is such a mess! I don’t know how to make it return to the way it was or the way photos show on the iMac.

I agree with all the comments made. This is a disaster for me. I have built up a well organised library based carefully on albums and all that work has been savaged. Could someone from apple tell us why they have done this? And how we can get our albums back? Or can I simply delete iOS 18 and reinstall 17? What on earth change a really good system and without any consultation with your users fraternity?

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 set my phone to stop syncing. I don't need further issues. I bought a good drive to remove all docs and pics from phone except contact pics and background pic

The new IOS photo app is so bad, I am going to move everything to Android, as its so bad... I have lost so many years of photo's, after 7 new iPhones, multiple iMac's etc never a problem. Bought a watch ultra 2, ended up having to update IOS on phone to 18. and it has cause a total nightmare!!!! it would be cheaper to just buy a Microsoft laptop and copy it all across and sort it out that way, than the time required to sort out this complete and total abortion of an app!!!... absolutely threaders!!!! apple can good FOOK themselves!!!!

So true. I have over 40000 photos in my phone and I can’t even search them now..Worst thing is favourites album not showing in WhatsApp anymore! Am I supposed to search my whole gallery which has over 40000 photos when I want to post on which I took years ago?

This is the worst update ever! Photos looks so messy I can’t find anything anywhere anymore

Apple you have crucified absolutely crucified my albums that took weeks months and years to organise how dare you mess up my albums? This is the worst mistake you have ever made iOS 18. It is an absolute rum sack. It’s Rumack my whole phone what an utter utter pathetic joke for Theso-called world leading in technology. You’re an absolute Bimal rectify it with an immediate effect. So-called world leading in technology. You’re an absolute Bimal rectify it with a immediate effect because you are cause you’ve damaged all my business photos that took ages organising along with all my other photographs find a fixed fast because everyone’s up in arms about the mess you’ve caused thank you

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!!

It’s a catastrophic update and REALLY the worst update ever 😡