How to Change Photo Album Names on iPhone & iPad
Sorting pictures into albums on your iOS devices is a good way to manage photos intended for different purposes, and some image editing apps like Snapseed and Instagram will create their own albums to help keep things arranged. It’s not uncommon for an albums purpose to evolve though, and what once may have held just a bunch of pictures for picture frame mode on the iPad may have slowly evolved into a broader place to store photos, making a name change appropriate.
Renaming those photo albums isn’t entirely obvious though, so we’ll cover how to do this on an iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
How to Rename Photo Albums on iPhone, iPad, & iPod touch
- Open the Photos app, then go to the photo Albums view (you may need to tap “See All” to list all photos albums)
- Tap on “Edit” in the corner of the screen
- Tap directly on the name of the album you want to rename to summon the keyboard
- Enter the new album name you want to use for that photos album, then tap “Done” to complete the change
You can rename other photos albums the same way if you wish.
Note that you can not change the name of default photos albums, like Camera Roll, Screenshots, Animated, Live Photos, Bursts, Time-lapse, etc, any of those default album names are set by iOS.
You can only change the name of photos albums that have been added by the user.
Changing an album name on the iPhone and iPod touch both look identical, and while doing this on the iPad is basically the same process, it looks pretty different because the albums are displayed slightly differently due to having a larger screen size compared to iPhone.
In modern versions of iOS and iPadOS this process looks a bit different than it used to. For historical purposes, here are some screenshots of the photo albums renaming process on earlier iOS versions:
On iPhone:
On iPad:
You can rename any album with the exception of Camera Roll, which holds all photos on the device, and the stock default albums. There are some cases where you won’t want to change the given names though, because some iOS image editing apps like Snapseed will create their own albums for photos altered or modified with those apps. As you may have guessed, if you change the name of those albums made by apps and then use the app again, that app will end up generating a new album with the apps name again anyway.
It seems to me that a step was left out. Sometimes when I pull up albums, not all albums are shown. You must select “see all” if your album page is open. Then you will see edit button.
I could hug you. Usually, online tutors seem to leave out one crucial instruction, which is anxiety-inducing.
Thanks, Maggie, for taking the time to point this out.
When I click Edit on iPad 12.1.1 it grays out the album name so I am unable the rename it. I used a third party app to import several albums into the iPad but unfortunately the names came across incorrectly.
True, editing CAN be done on iPhone but NOT iPad. The only thing edit does in iPad is give option to delete the album.
You can absolutely edit and change Photo album names on iOS for iPad and iOS for iPhone. iOS on the iPhone and iPad is the same iOS. It’s iOS.
I am using an iPad right now, and I just used the directions as instructed to change the name of a Photos album on iPad.
Tap “Edit” then tap the photo album name, the keyboard shows up, rename the album, tap Done. Simple.
So that makes several of the commenters here totally wrong, which is typical of internet commenters who seem to never read the article.
I followed these steps to rename one of my photo album folders, and it will not work. When Edit is selected, the only choice I have is to delete that photo album folder. My iPhone is running on iOS version 11.4.1
You can’t rename the default photo albums included in iOS, that is probably why you can’t rename the photo album on the iPhone.
For example if you try to rename Camera Roll you can not do that, nor can you rename Hidden or Screenshots or Videos etc. You can only rename the albums you add yourself to the Photos app.
Thank you!!! This was very helpful :)
I bought a card reader and downloaded some of
my pictures to my i pad. is there a way to change the name on this album from “imported?”