Reorder button unresponsive for Photos app Collections

On my iPhone I have to wait a minute or so, until I can hold and drag the items in the list. No idea what the iPhone is doing until it allows the list to be rearranged. After waiting a while I can tap and hold one of the items, for example "Others" and drag it up or down. It does not matter whether I grab the text or the handle.

Try a forced restart:

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

This is different from a simple Power Off. I had to continue holding the button down past the "slide to power off" message, and then I released the button only after  the Apple Logo appeared indicating a re-start. 

When you tap "reorder", the display should show you a list of items that can be rearranged, with handles (three horizontal lines) to the right of the items. Then you should be able to hold down onto the handle, until until it is moving slightly, and now it can be dragged to a different position. Are you not even seeing the handles, like in this screenshot? My iPhone is set to German, so it is showing "Sammlungen " instead of "Collections". The handles are very faint because of the Liquid Glass design.

Your description is how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately it is not working this way. These handles (3 lines) are shown, but they do not respond at all.

I have this issue on my iPhone 14 Pro and also on the new iPhone 17 Pro, but not on my iPad Pro.

léonie wrote: … On my iPhone I have to wait a minute or so, until I can hold and drag the items in the list. No idea what the iPhone is doing until it allows the list to be rearranged.

Weird. For my iPhone on OS18, the editing of the Collections list is immediate.

For my iPad on OS26, the editing is also immediate. No waiting.

iPhone is Optimized. iPad is not.

All the buttons are frozen!  They’re not working, mate.