What has happened to the Camera Roll in iOS 18 ?

It's quite evident that we don't all use Photos to control our collections, sometimes we just want to use it as secondary back up solution where we can browse photos that we have edited and organised elsewhere.


I for example downland everything to Adobe Lightroom - rework the images - store them in appropriate folders on my Mac (which then acts as the source) and then share back in an organised way with my iPhone. This would allow me to use Camera Roll as an obvious, clean source, of photos that I could choose not to organise at all or to organise at a later date should I want. I think Adobe is still very widely used by professionals in the photo market so I would hope that Apple would consider better ways to work alongside the industry favourites much as they do with WhatsApp etc.


What Apple have done with Ios18 is to lose the benefit of Camera Roll instead merging it's contents in amongst a single Library where all the other 20k photos I have organised now also reside. It's now close to impossible to target all the photos that I haven't organised into sub directories. I'm also not sure there is any advantage in having a single super large folder/directory/store as all photos are also appearing nicely organised in subdirectory folders on the same iPhone just below it.


I hope Apple can find a way of just adding back a "Camera Roll" filter to allow those in that status to be easily found bearing in mind that it has always worked that way in the past.... or can anyone suggest another way of handling this situation please?

Posted on Dec 10, 2024 04:07 PM

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Posted on Dec 19, 2024 07:40 PM

Not really. The "Camera Roll" was renamed to "Recents". Until iOS 18 it was the place where all 'new' images were placed (photos from iPhone camera, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) As other people have stated, you could choose to download some or all of them to your Mac or PC, edit/organize them, then maybe upload some of them back to the phone, organized by Mac/PC folder.


iOS 18 changed all that. The images in Recents/Camera Roll are now no longer readily identifiable.


A whole bunch of us would like the Recents/Camera Roll (we don't really care what its called) feature back again!

Cheers.

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Dec 19, 2024 07:40 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

Not really. The "Camera Roll" was renamed to "Recents". Until iOS 18 it was the place where all 'new' images were placed (photos from iPhone camera, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) As other people have stated, you could choose to download some or all of them to your Mac or PC, edit/organize them, then maybe upload some of them back to the phone, organized by Mac/PC folder.


iOS 18 changed all that. The images in Recents/Camera Roll are now no longer readily identifiable.


A whole bunch of us would like the Recents/Camera Roll (we don't really care what its called) feature back again!

Cheers.

Dec 13, 2024 01:07 PM in response to -A-

Apprecaite your response and I had actually found that solution from other threads - problem is that veiwing the camera roll in that way does not really allow you to housekeep it in any sensible way. The images are available one by one and not in a mass selctable way. I have circa 25k images on the phone oraganised by Adobe Lightroom plus around 1100 images in the Camera Roll category. For me the CR is a bit like your download folder where images that are still to be sorted, and others that may never need sorting, reside. Every now and then I clean them up but some images will never need categorising, stuff like gas and water meter readings, postal receipts, photos of holiday hire cars, a load of stuff thats best to keep for a while for legals reasons etc, etc. Not sure what Apple have acehived by placing all the photos in one pot without the ability to then filter the pot. Currently looking around other photo gallery apps to provide an alternative.

Dec 20, 2024 09:14 AM in response to g_b_hall


iOS 18 changed all that. The images in Recents/Camera Roll are now no longer readily identifiable.

A whole bunch of us would like the Recents/Camera Roll (we don't really care what its called) feature back again!
Cheers.

You are correct about that. However, you are not addressing Apple here, the only people that have any control about changing things. We are users just like you and can be just a frustrated. If you wish to let Apple know your thoughts and feelings about this issue, then you need to let them know. Use this link, Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Dec 13, 2024 03:37 PM in response to KaeBFly

thanks for your input. I think any very recent photo will indeed show in those sections as you suggest but older ones, that have been on the Camera roll a bit longer, will start to mix in with other photos uploaded to the phone from other sources. Remember lots of people take photos on other camera equipment and share it to their iPhone. Lots of people also used Adobe and other software to manipulate and organise their photos as, with respect, they are occassionally better software products than Apples own. All these softwares though do run on the MAC OS and Apple therfore should provide better support and continued integration with the iPhone photo gallery. Other threads on the same subject had gained quite a lot of ticked support so I know I have much company in my frustration with these recent changes. My biggest gripe is that i'm not sure what they've acheived by putting everything into one mega pot - you can still filter under various headings to get to differnt types of photo groups so I don't understand why Apple don't just make "camera roll" an additional filter option in the current iOS. I think that owould resolve it. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has used an alternative Photo Gallery app on their phones that works with imported photo folders such as those created by Adobe and other 3rd party providers?

Dec 13, 2024 02:57 PM in response to Tjornelund

If you scroll down to Utilities in the photo app are none of those options what you are looking for? Like if you choose Recently Saved does it not function the same as the old Recent Photos label did? It does for me so maybe I’m misunderstanding. I can also get to recently saved under pinned collections which you could reorder to show near the top if you want to get to it without needing to scroll

Dec 14, 2024 05:58 PM in response to KaeBFly

The difference is really clear but probably not to someone that doesn't use non Apple software to edit their photos. So for me... I take some of my photos on my iphone, I choose which ones to download for editing on Adobe Lightroom, I delete those original photos from my iPhone and then after I have edited them and organised them into apprpriate folders I re-share them with the iPhone again in an organised way via syncing. So the edited images are stored on my Mac by Lightroom in the "pictures" folder that is available by default on the Mac and you can then choose which folders from pictures you want to store back on your iphone when you come to sync your phone with your computer.


This process therefore leaves any photos you choose not to edit in the camera roll and therefore for me those were the only photos that appeared under "library" on the iPhone, the photos I uploaded from Lightroom did not appear in the Library section. So in the past Library = iPhone photos only and other images did not appear in there. Today everything appears in Library en mass regardless of it's source or status.


So that you can see I am not making this up or imagining there is an issue where there isn't one, I am uploading a single message from another similar Apple thread clearly showing quite a lot of support against the impact of this recent change.


Dec 13, 2024 05:35 PM in response to Tjornelund

I guess it depends on what you define as “very recent”. For me that option shows photos going back to 2017 so recent is very loosely used. My full library has photos back to 2006 (obviously pre-iPhone but had been imported in when I finally got on the iPhone train back in 2011). I guess outside of it not being named Camera Roll anymore I’m just completely misunderstanding what it is that you aren’t seeing reflected like you want it to be. Other than the actual format changes that came with how the photo app looks since iOS 18 released and I think some of the extra filtering options that appear under Utilities I don’t notice a real difference in how my photos are organized…in respect to both actual photos taken on one of my iPhones through the years or ones imported from other sources. Hopefully you’ll be able to find a 3rd party app that better fits what you are looking for.

Dec 16, 2024 07:18 AM in response to Tjornelund

Tjornelund wrote:

the name might have gone but everyone will tell you that OS18 is the first time it's actually fully disappeared - up until this last change you could always get to your recent photos without them being mixed in with everything else.

I'm not sure what you mean by "everything else." What else would I have in Photos but photos? The Library shows all of my recent photos. I have it sorted so that the most recent are at the bottom.

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What has happened to the Camera Roll in iOS 18 ?

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