Best Ways to Customize the Updated Photos App in IOS 18
We’ve seen a whole host of changes made in iOS 18 , and the robust Photos app is one of the programs Apple has given a major overhaul. You’ll notice that it looks significantly different as soon as you open it on your iPhone after applying the latest software updates.
No need to panic: all your photos and videos are still there. However, there have been some changes (hopefully for the better) to the way you work with your library.
By the way, the overhaul isn’t nearly as dramatic if you upgraded to macOS 15 Sequoia. On desktop, the Photos app looks more or less the same, although you’ll notice some differences in the highlighting of images and videos.
New look and photo layout.
As soon as you open the newly updated Photos app on your iPhone, you’ll notice that the tabs at the bottom of the screen have disappeared: there’s now a single view that combines the previous Photos , For You , and Albums tabs. in one long serve. Now you need to scroll down to find some of the curated collections that used to be in separate tabs.
According to Apple, this reorganization makes it “very easy to quickly search for photos” and means that “you can spend less time searching and more time enjoying memories,” although it takes some getting used to.
You’ll see your most recent photos next to the Last Days heading. Tap this to see the days you took multiple photos or videos selected by the app.
Moving down the screen, you’ll encounter the familiar People & Pets (or just People ) and Memories albums, which Photos automatically compiles for you based on a number of factors (including, of course, who’s in the photos) . There’s also a new entry here called Trips , which is pretty self-explanatory—at least for now, it seems impossible to manually curate your trips or edit the ones the Photos app has collected.
Keep scrolling down and you’ll be taken to all the familiar categories carried over from previous versions: Selfies , Live Photos , Recently Deleted , and Hidden Photos and Videos, for example. They all work the same as in iOS 17. Below, you finally get to the albums you’ve created yourself – so by default, the most prominent ones are the images sorted by algorithms.
However, you can change this order, as we will discuss below. The Search button is now in the top right corner rather than on its own tab: you can select it to search for places, people, dates, or anything else. Finally, tapping your Apple profile picture will give you access to a number of app settings, including shared library options and auto-play controls.
Setting up the Photos app in iOS 18
Basic customization options can be found by scrolling all the way to the bottom of photos and videos and clicking Customize & Reorder . You can then arrange the sections in the Photos app in any order (by dragging the handles on the right) or hide them from view (using the blue checkmarks).
You should also see a Pinned Collection entry somewhere in the Photos app’s scrolling feed. It’s sort of like a favorites bar for your photos and videos that you like the most, or at least the ones that you want easy access to. Click “Edit” next to this heading and you can choose which collections appear here and how they are organized.
There’s one more customization option available to you: If you scroll up instead of down in the main photo and video feed, you’ll be taken to a familiar grid that shows every single image and clip in your camera’s catalog—down at the bottom of the screen. screen, you can create groups by month and year , as was the case before the release of iOS 18.
Tap the two-arrow icon (bottom left), then Filter , and you can choose what appears in this view: for example, you can limit it to just your favorites or just photos or videos . In the meantime, tap View Options instead of Filter and you can hide shared photos and screenshots, as well as adjust the zoom level.
Another note: if you’re looking for the carousel feature that Apple previously announced for photos in iOS 18, it’s been removed (at least for now). The carousel sat right above the photo and video feed, pulling algorithmically selected content from the main grid, and during beta there were complaints that it was simply in the way.