Everything new about Photos in iOS 18

iOS 18’s Photos represents a major overhaul that touches nearly every corner of the app. There’s a lot to love about it, but it’s also caused quite a bit of controversy.

The headline here is this redesigned app. Gone are the long-standing Library, For You, Albums, and Search tabs, and in their place is a new, unified app experience.

The new design is a single page layout instead of tabs.

The library will sit in the middle, with other groups below. There used to be a carousel in the recommendations section, but Apple removed it as part of listening to customer feedback during the beta process.

The new design looks better when editing photos

When you pull down to go to the Library view, you’ll see a nice animation as the Sort, Timeline, and End buttons slide into view.

One feature currently missing is the Camera Roll. This particular view shows recently taken photos, and is different from Import, Screenshots, and other media.

Otherwise, the library still allows you to change the grouping by all, month, or year. To return to the main part of the app, just pull down or tap the X in the lower right corner.

The main body of the app is divided into different photo collections, some of which are new groups, while others replace existing tabs.

Keep an eye on your synced media and toggle some settings.

Finally, the redesign includes a new profile-like view that shows sync progress and lets you turn certain settings on or off within the app.

Apple is promoting the reimagined app as not only improved but also more customizable than before. You can adjust all the sections and their order below.

You can turn each collection on or off individually, and rearrange them by dragging them into the order you want.

Reorganize the new Photos app to suit your needs

We use screenshots a lot when creating content, so we’ve moved media types with screenshots to the top for quicker access.

Many collections, whether new or old, are highly classified, even more so than before.

For example, people can now include groups. You can create your own by selecting people, but albums also start presenting people.

Traveling is really cool. It replaced “places” from the old people, pets, and places album.

There are now many more options available to you for configuring your media.

These are added based on your location and sorted by year. You can see all the places you visited in 2021 (New York, Boston, Portland, Michigan, Iceland, Nashville, etc.).

This time around, the utility is much more powerful. Duplicates, Hidden, and Recently Deleted are still there, but Receipts, Handwriting, Illustrations, QR Codes, Recently Viewed, Recently Edited, Recently Shared, and Documents have been added.

In addition to all these features, there are a lot of other amazingly cool features in this category called Apple Intelligence.

However, this means that the feature won’t be available on all iPhones, and instead will only be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max for now.

The biggest addition is the Clean Up tool, which essentially “cleans up” your photos by removing unnecessary clutter, as the name suggests.

Unlike other phone manufacturers, the goal of the Clean Up tool and Apple Intelligence is to preserve the original intent of the photo, not change it.

The Clean Up tool allows you to remove things like unnecessary people or distracting cars in the background, or unnecessary clouds if you want a clear sky.

Use the Clean Up tool to remove people, objects, etc.

In theory, you should be able to remove the blemishes, depending on the situation. You’re not going to change someone’s head, open their eyes, or put a random animal on someone’s lap.

It doesn’t drop purple drops, give someone a third arm, or change the color of your car. It just makes the photo better without being overwhelming.

There are also third-party apps for all of these features.

Create photo memories with natural language

Apple Intelligence is also related to memory. It can create memory videos just by describing what you want.

Ask your partner to create a travel memento of you and your partner’s trip, complete with a big group photo of your friends. You can even compile these memories into a story.

The example Apple gave was of a young boy learning to fish. They filmed him getting there, casting his line, and eventually catching a big fish.

Finally, Apple Intelligence helps you find the photos you want.

“Show me a picture of Harrison eating food in New York City” or “Show me a picture of Face looking relaxed in a gray sweatshirt on a rainy day.”

All of these new features will be part of iOS 18, which is expected to be released this fall, along with other platform updates from Apple.