iPhone 17 Pro Photos App consistently crashing and hanging

Update: Apple Support couldn’t really help me. I told them several times that the error occurs for multiple users and pointed them to the thread here. They just kept saying, “No, it has nothing to do with Shared Albums.”

So we tried everything: resetting network settings, deleting the Photos app, downloading it again, restarting multiple times, logging in to iCloud.com via browser — and then they told me to make a backup and reset my iPhone. I already did that yesterday, as I mentioned here this morning.

Now I reluctantly turned off my Shared Albums, and I doubt there will be a solution anytime soon if the problem keeps being ignored. I’ll probably have to spend the next few days backing up my Shared Albums from my other iPhone somewhere and saving them to the gallery. I don’t see any other way to access the photos from my new iPhone. Terrible. Spend several hours today trying to solve this.

Turned off shared albums half an hour ago and now everythings works fine btw! Photo App never worked for longer than 5 mins so I am positive it stays that way 🙃🙃🙃🙃

Hi, just wanted to come on here again since I posted earlier in this thread with the same persistent problem. I ran into this issue doing transfer to transfer and my only solution was erasing the iPhone and restoring my backup via iCloud instead. Was annoying since iCloud restore doesn’t feel as complete as data transfer but I think it’s worth trying since that pretty much fixed the photos issue for me. Before that my new phone was practically unusable

I hate to have to say it…just factory reset. I’ve had this issue since I got my iphone 17 three weeks ago, and today I called Apple. They ran three diagnostics tests and my phone was perfectly fine, but they were able to see the issue I was having with the camera and photos apps through screen sharing. I was instructed to do an iCloud back up, do a factory reset, and when setting up the phone again DO NOT click transfer from last iCloud Backup, DO NOT click transfer from other iPhone. Only move to the next step and log into your iCloud.

It takes a bit to sync (and now I have to redownload all my apps since I didn’t have those in my iCloud settings before), but at least the phone works.

I was dreading doing it, but honestly, it’s not so bad. Just factory reset.

Same issue. Took to apple support and they said the only solution was to wipe the phone and start from scratch which I didn't want to do. Found this thread, turned off shared albums, and bam, fixed. Thanks for the tip. Hopefully apple will fix this so we can use shared albums again.

I just reset my iPhone as well and set it up only through the iCloud login. Super annoying, and it definitely doesn’t feel complete. But it seemed like the only solution to keep using the shared albums. I really hope the issue is fixed now. I guess I’ll be stuck on my iPhone all day redownloading all the apps and setting everything up again until it’s back to normal. I hope the next years this problem won‘t appear again when getting the next new iPhone 😩

Hi,

Did your issue get fixed and stay fixed? Just got an iPhone 17 Pro and am facing the exact same issues as you on the list. Getting very frustrated. Is the only way to fix this erasing then restoring the iPhone?

I’m experiencing the exact same issue. I also upgraded from the 15 Pro to the 17 Pro. I’ve had the new phone for four days now, and it’s still not working. I’ve never encountered anything like this before — it’s extremely disappointing, and at this point I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. Basically, I can’t use the Photos app or the camera, and whenever I try to send screenshots or pictures to others, the app crashes. I am also not able to turn anything off like icloud synch or shared albums because it keeps crashing.

Reset my iPhone again and tried to set it up anew using data transfer from my old iPhone 15 Pro. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful — the problem is still there. I also tried upgrading my iCloud storage, but that didn’t help either. So it really seems like the only option is to turn off Shared Albums?

Will they reappear if I turn them back on in the future? I feel like my entire life — all my vacations with friends, all my pictures with friends in various shared albums — is in there, and I’m scared of losing them.

I also don’t dare sell my old iPhone, since all the data is still on it (which is really frustrating, because its value keeps dropping).

So do you know if all my Shared Albums will show up again when I re-enable them after the bug is fixed? I’m so annoyed — I’ve never experienced anything like this after an iPhone release, not in all these years.

Alright, thank you! I contacted Apple Support this morning and also sent them the link to this thread to let them know that I’m not the only one experiencing this issue. They told me they’d look into it and will call me back this afternoon. I’ll keep you guys updated.

I’m experiencing this issue currently.

i had an iPhone 15 pro max which I hadn’t upgraded to ios26 yet.

i transferred my data to my new iPhone 17 pro max, instantly had issues with my camera and photo album.

i spoke to Apple in store and was told maybe a device issue and as I’ve only had it a day, request a replacement. Which started the process of swapping back to my iPhone 15, in doing so I upgraded to ios26.1 and with that transferred the issue over. I’m now experiencing the issue on my iPad which was fine until I changed over to the iPhone 17.

if anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear it please.

I have an appointment with the apple Genius Bar thursday and also have ordered a replacement 17 but if the issue persists, I’m not sure what to do.

my issue explained:

for info: I have 5,100 photos in my photos app. With 146GB of space available on my iPhone 15.

the 17 I purchased was 1TB so space wasn’t a concern either.

take a photo in the camera - doesn’t appear in photos app when I swap between the apps.

take photo in camera - app freezes

take photo in camera - appears in the left hand side view, unable to share, delete or quick click into photo album.

screenshots - a mystery. Sometimes save, sometimes don’t. Unable to share at time of screenshot

sharing photos - if I click to send a photo in any app like message or WhatsApp, it freezes and I have to restart the app to even get the keyboard back to type.

in app (for example, Instagram) if I went to share post from photos, no photos show up.

settings - if I try to look at camera or photos settings at all (even for specific apps) the entire thing crashes

i will turn my phone on and off to sort the issue but sometimes that doesn’t even resolve it and the images I took are missing still.

Screen recording - will just go round like it’s saving but never saves and crashes my entire phone

i have tried various things to resolve this (even upgraded my iCloud storage to 2TB). Would factory resetting my phone and setting it up from scratch work?

im just concerned im wasting my time doing so. I mean my iPad was fine ?? And since I transferred to the iPhone 17, it’s now across all my Apple devices.

im just not willing to turn off shared albums when I heavily rely on them for my memories.

thanks for any advice you can provide in advance. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this

Upgraded from 15 pro max to 17 pro max for the new zoom and cool down features. I photograph hummingbirds in particular. This camera is terrible. Every single shot is burry on the subject if zoomed. Video is worst zooming in and out on it’s own. Can’t find the subject. All my shots, hours of work and not 1 picture. The phone has also frozen twice and gone black for a s few seconds twice. So far I hate it and am mad that I lost so much time on it. Cross fingers they fix it with an update. I am also not a fan of the photo hard button. I keep taking pictures of my ear. Just make the button a bit smaller with a bigger gap for a thumb in the middle.