My relationship with the Photos app on my iPhone is complicated. It is both my treasure trove of memories and my secret pile of shame. I have thousands of photos from trips, outings, and gatherings with loved ones, but thousands more of me, food, and random internet stuff (tweets, Reddit posts, and crossword clues). Add personal photos of things like my tax documents or IDs, and the Photos app probably contains all the most important and sensitive things in my life. I spend hours on it every day. I’d be lost without the 73,600 photos and 2,607 videos I’ve stored on it (and the 600GB in my Google Photos, of course, I only switched to iOS two years ago).
So when Apple announced that a redesign was coming in iOS 18 (and iPadOS 18), I was skeptical and worried. change? I hate it. My fingers now know exactly where the buttons are; having to relearn everything would be a pain. How else can I quickly find the screenshots I need?
The good news is that iOS 18’s redesign of the Photos app can make downloading things easier. Even better, it can allow people to use their albums in ways that best suit their needs – perhaps those of you who are more utilitarian and less vain about it can also benefit.
I took a closer look at the upcoming changes at WWDC last month. But last week, I took a deeper dive when I spoke with Della Huff, Billy Sorrentino, and John McCormack from Apple’s photography, design, and software teams to learn more about why and how the app was redesigned.
What will the redesigned Photos app look like in iOS 18?
At first glance, your photos may not look too different. As shown at WWDC 2024, all your photos will continue to be the first thing you see. Peer a little beyond the surface, however, and the changes are evident. Gone are the tabs under your images that say Library, About You, Albums, and Search. And instead of your grid basically taking up the entire page, it now ends about two-thirds of the way down, with the album rows showing at the bottom.
I have to say that I was initially annoyed by this change, but after hearing that my entire library was just a swipe down, I was hugely relieved. Well, mostly, anyway. The bar at the bottom that lets you jump between year, month, day, and all views will now show years, months, and everything else. For me this is fine as I rarely use the daily option.
A new filter button in the lower left corner lets you choose what to focus on or crop from the web, such as screenshots, favorites, portraits, videos and edited images. Swiping to the side will show different collections generated by your phone or created by you.
The idea is to reduce the “scrolling of fate through the web,” Huff said, referring to an idea McCormack mentioned before. With over three trillion photos and videos taken every year, Apple users probably don’t want to sit back and forth through blurry photos or screenshots. Helping them get to what they want faster is one of the major focuses of the redesign.
But like I said, too much change sucks. Sorrentino said, “From the beginning of this design process, it was critical that we didn’t lose any of the key features that people love today.” So far, it really seems like the things I use most are either still there, or even better. – easy to reach. And while I find it unnecessary to automatically drop every collection as a memory on redesign, at least it will look good and not take up extra space.
When you swipe right on the grid, you’ll see the new photo carousel highlighting what Apple thinks is your best content. This uses ‘device intelligence’, which is in-app and has been developing for 15 years, and takes into account data such as the people in the photos and the location where they were taken to create mini-movies of your outings and activities.
Don’t confuse this with Apple Intelligence, though. It’s just algorithms. In fact, McCormack called it “intuition.” For example, he said, “The iPhone knew who my partner was long before I told the iPhone who my partner was.” The team is building on the same system that identifies faces and generates memories here, and in iOS 18 it will start showing sets of photos that include groups of people and pets like you and your parents, your partner and your pet, or you and your partner. There will also be new collections like “recently edited” and “a smart receipt album that you can put right on top of fixed collections,” Huff said.
She pointed out that in the redesigned Photos app, “there are a number of new dimensions and types of content that we’re bringing to the surface, such as receipts and documents, handwriting, QR codes and more.” These can lead to more efficient and relevant search results, for to help you explore your library.
How do the Apple Intelligence features work in the new Photos app?
Apple Intelligence will bring several new tools to the Photos app, like Cleanup to erase background distractions and text prompts to create narrative memories with storylines. It will also enable ‘natural language search’, which will let you find pictures by describing what’s in them, so you don’t have to try to remember where or when the event happened, or even -bad, doomscroll. It should be as easy as typing in “a flaming praying mantis with a group of people in shock” instead of searching through the hundreds of photos you’ve taken in Las Vegas. However, they will require you to have at least an iPhone 15 Pro.
During my time with Huff, Sorrentino, and McCormack, I learned that Cleanup works on all images in your Photos app, so you can also use it on screenshots or downloaded photos. McCormack explained that when you use Cleanup on an image taken in portrait mode, “we’ll clean up the original image and then reapply the depth of field effect.”
Apple uses “three different AI models” to remove background distractions, McCormack said. The first will “understand the clutter so that when you click on something, we know what to make disappear.” The other two are a “fill model” to replace the hole, as well as one that will understand “object segmentation boundaries”. The latter will prevent Cleanup from leaving holes in your subject’s head or accidentally giving him an unflattering haircut.
What can you customize and why does it matter?
Since the new Photos app includes so many collections, the fact that you can create and pin them wherever you want makes your favorite images easy to reach. Basically, the entire area under the grate is your playground. “You can organize the structure of the app itself,” Sorrentino said. You can “turn any section of the app on or off” or reorganize it.
My favorite person is me, so I’ll probably put my best selfies in a collection and it’ll be the first thing I see after swiping on the web. But as part of the under-the-grid collections, I’ll have the crochet patterns I’ve screenshotted, like the one I pin up high, as well as important information I use often, like my airline loyalty account numbers.
The beauty of customization in general is how each person can tailor an interface to their individual needs. Maybe you’d prefer to use Photos a little more like Pinterest, where you take screenshots of the car models you’re considering buying and put them in an album. Or maybe you track your meals by taking pictures of your food daily to help with menu planning. Or you’re cataloging your clothing, your garden, your stamp collection, or your growing child. You will be able to create a collection of the desired photos and upload them.
I haven’t spent time with the new Photos app yet, so while I’m excited by the promise of what customization can bring, I’m also reserving judgment. I also enjoy scrolling through my gallery as I look back on my weekend as it visually represents my train of thought through the days. Sometimes I use screenshots to remind myself to do something later in the evening when I’m inevitably staring at pictures of my friend’s cute baby again. So the idea of letting Apple filter out what it thinks might be minor isn’t something that appeals to my control freak self. Fortunately, it looks like I can still view all the images in my library.
I’d also like to see how the cleanup tool performs, as well as whether “natural language search” will fare well compared to Google’s recently announced Ask Photos tool. And even though I don’t make or watch a lot of memories, I’d be curious to see what a video would look like if prompted by something like “all my outfits from casual to formal.”
iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 are currently available to developers as a closed beta, with a public beta expected later this summer. The full release of the new software will likely fall in the fall, when most people will likely get the redesigned Photos app when they update their iPhones. It’s still a few months before your fingers have to relearn where everything is.
