Defined album has 4,500+ photos arranged in a custom sort. The newest are displayed first. The top 20 or so photos are manually dragged to a new location. When looking at the album, using “custom sort order” often when I exit app and come back later and open the album, not all moved photos are where they were previously moved to… they reverted back to original placement. Why does this happen?
iPad mini 5, iPadOS 18
Fivver wrote: …not all moved photos are where they were previously moved to… they reverted back to original placement. Why does this happen?
First, I don't really have that experience. My pictures stay put. (Unless my cat gets to the iPad-- then she knocks all the pictures off on the floor.)
But second, we have albums so we don't have 4500 pictures in one spot! I do get a few hundred pictures in an album if I took them all on the same shoot, but my first job is to separate them into smaller albums, and put those albums into a folder. The folder goes into another folder of folders. I have at least a thousand albums, but I can shuffle through them quickly because they're organized.
And keep in mind that Albums are just lists of pictures you want to see together. Pictures aren't "in an album," they're on an album's list. So a picture can be on several albums. The picture of "Aunt Ethel at the Grand Canyon" can be in the "Aunt Ethel" album with other pictures of Aunt Ethel, and it can also be in the "Grand Canyon" album with pictures of other people at the Grand Canyon. And it can also be in a the "September 2015" album with other things that happened then. Each album is pointing to a single file stored in the Photos Library, so having pictures in multiple albums takes up no more storage space. If you're not organizing pictures by putting them in multiple albums, then you may be missing out on this powerful feature.
Anyway, the only thing I can suggest about your problem is that it seems to me that some things, perhaps like recording the custom order for an album, may take a few minutes, and it may get interrupted if you shut down too quickly-- but that's mostly a guess. Try seeing if it works to leave the iPad open for a while after ordering them. The best solution to your problem, though, is to use albums and folders to help organize your pictures.
Richard, thanks very much for your very detailed response, it is much appreciated. All my other albums are much smaller and I don’t sort them. The 4,500+ album is a variety of animals and bird photos, of varying sizes and colors. Sounds crazy, but I don’t want to have 2 different gorilla photos side by side. So sorting, is by animal type, colors, and photo shape/ size. As you can imagine, I have done this over a very long period of time! I think your suggestion that I may be closing too quickly is probably right on target. I will give it a go and let you know. Thanks!
Cool! Sounds like a beautiful zoological screensaver! The "closing too quickly" problem (if it's real) may be connected to other things that the iPad is doing in the background, so it might look rather random.
You didn't say, but if you have a Mac, it's all way simpler there.
It does make a great screen saver and many of the photos are sent to my Aura frame (approx 2,000). Yep, I love all the photos! I volunteered at the Norfolk VA Zoo for several years as a zookeeper’s aide, so animals and artwork of all kinds are my passion.
Richard you were absolutely correct! I was closing the app down too soon. I went back rearranged the sort order amongst approximately the newest 100 pics and did not close the app, and didn’t switch the network off, nor lock the iPad mini 5. I have a habit of shutting net off and locking iPad when I’m done.
Came back from running an errand and all was good. Closed app, re-opened app and sort was perfect!!! Never occurred to me…
I spoke too soon… sorry. Sort order was not maintained next day when I went to add 2 photos. Arghhh! 😠
I realized indexing for searching was probably running also. What I’m going to do is leave it powered on, network on, and plugged in charging overnight.
Will see if any impact in the morning. If not, well it may go back to what you also suggested ~ just the sheer number of photos ~ 4,692!
Doing Photos on a Mac is way better than on an iPhone. It's not just the keyboard and trackpad, it's Smart Folders and slicker organization tools. A MacAir is very sweet! I'm using a MacBook Pro now, because I want more ports and such things. Get the most storage you can afford-- that's a prime cause of frustration for people. When you run low on storage space, you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to move things around to find some room!
I would never do photos on an iPhone - that would be a crazymaker and I don’t own one 😊! I’m a step up or so working on an iPad mini 5 and I love it. I’ve always done the windows thing and I go back to working under DOS, so it’s been quite a few years! I will definitely be going for a major step up to an 🍎 with maximum storage… I learned that the hard way on the mini! 64gb doesn’t go far, so I pay 99cents a month for 50gb more iCloud storage.
iCloud storage is good, but it doesn't replace onboard storage. I have 2 TB, and I've used 1½ TB, down from 1.9TB. It's best to keep more than 10% of the storage free, so I was doing an Icarus and flying a bit close to the sun.
I love it when I get one right!
You may be right-- that it takes a long time to scan the information in 5000 pictures.
Yep, even over night powered on and network on, no change. Some sorted, some not.
Thanks for you help and insights, much appreciated.
Drat-- that doesn't for me. It may be the huge size of the album. All the solutions I can think of use a Mac…
😊 have only been an Apple user since purchase of mini iPad 5, which I love. When my laptop dies and it will shortly, I will definitely be going Apple all the way! 🍎
Yep, next device will be maxed out on storage! With mini being 1st Apple device I didn’t know any better.🤫 Icarus ~ don’t want to melt those wings!!!
how do i manage an album custom ordering in photo app iPadOS 18.5
