Organizing photo albums issue on iPhone 18 iOS

Before iOS18 I would bring in albums from a MAC and stored all new photos and other pictures in 'recents'. If the new pictures warranted an album, I moved them off to a MAC then restored them to an album. Regardless, the recents folder has a manageable number of pictures and did not show every picture stored on the phone. Now the recents shows pictures from the most recent days or weeks and the Library seems to have replaced recents and has EVERY picture on the phone, including the ones from the MAC Albums. Seems to me that the new way of storing and sorting photos is the result of some engineer who thinks they have a great idea, asks their buddies and then implements it without warning customers, getting adequate, if any, customer feedback, and not providing any legacy support.

How so? All of your albums are still there. (tap albums). All of your photos can still be placed into albums.

In fact, in previous OSs the Recents view always showed all the pictures in the Library in order of date added. The Library view in previous OSs always showed all the pictures in the Library in order of date captured.

Now in OS18 there is one view, called Library, that can do either, depending on what you tell it you want.

When you first open Photos you see the Photos view, like this:

with the newest pictures in the middle so you see them first. Then scrolling down gets you to various collections, and scrolling up gets you to the Library view:

And in Library view, on the bottom of the screen there is a Sort menu. You can choose whether you want the Library view to sort by Date Captured, just like the old Library view, or sort by Date Added, just like the old Recents view.

You still get whatever you had before, but it's all in one.

What muguy said…

And you can still move the albums around to whatever order you like by touch&hold, and the moving them.