How to Improve Photos Layout on iPhone with iOS 18
The Photos app on iPhone received a significant layout redesign in iOS 18 that has left many iPhone users annoyed or frustrated as the new Photos design is not necessarily intuitive or easy to use for everyone. Things have been moved around, albums or features they were using might be missing or harder to access, the order of which photos show up in your camera roll may be different, and it can even be more difficult to locate particular categories of media with new layout too.
If you’re unhappy with the Photos app layout in iOS 18 on iPhone, read along and we’ll help you to improve the Photos layout so that it behaves more similarly to that you were accustomed to before.
How to Improve the Photos Layout on iPhone with iOS 18
If you’re hoping to make Photos normal again and undo the redesign, you can make a few changes that will dramatically improve your experience:
- Open the Photos app on iPhone
- Scroll all the way to the bottom and tap on “Customize & Reorder”
- Uncheck everything except for “Media Types”, “Utilities”, and “Albums”, (and perhaps ‘Shared Albums’ if you use that feature with friends/family)
- Drag the order of these categories around to arrange the Photos app layout how you wish them to appear, for example dragging Utilities and Media Types to the top
- Now scroll to the very bottom of your photos camera roll and tap the arrows pointing opposite directions (yet another mystery button!) and tap on “Sort by Recently Added”
These three changes combined, including rearranging the categories and changing sort order will make a considerable difference to your Photos app layout on iPhone with iOS 18, making it look and behave more like the Photos app in prior iOS versions on your iPhone.
Another helpful tip for using the new Photos app is that you have to tap on “Media Type” or “Utilities” to expand out into certain albums or views that you may have had quicker access to before, like for seeing screenshots in the new design for example.
What do you think of the Photos app layout design that came to iPhone with iOS 18? Do you like the new design or do you dislike it? Do you have any other improvement suggestions or tips for making the layout behave more like it used to? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
Having used Macs and iphones since the first models, I understand that what was good in 1985 and when the first iphone came out inevitably had to change. But what we have increasingly from Apple is complicated, cluttered unintuitive and seemingly untested on actual users interface changes that break a lot of natural interface grammar that has built up over decades. It feels more like something that Microsoft would make than the simple, clean, Mac/iOS interface. As well as just not working the way you expect it to and not allowing you to structure your files- in this case images-the way you want them displayed, there is just so much extraneous stuff on the screen! On a phone with limited screen space this is particularly annoying.
I understand that the experts can be better than any amateur focus group for broad overall structure but the interface has to work for real customers and how they want to access their own stuff.
Thanks for the tip which helps a lot, but Apple needs to stop breaking fundamental stuff like this!
I would really like to know WHY Apple impose such dumb changes on us? I have Photos set up the way I want it to be, but a few years ago a misguided Applecare advisor gave me wrong information which resulted in my entire library of 22K photos being duplicated with a lot of corruptions, which I have still not finished correcting; more recently another bit of bad advice resulted in partial duplication with more corruptions; and right now i almost lost the will to live. My lifetime collection of images – 8500 35mm slides and lost count of digital images – represents many of the best moments of my life, and I do NOT wish to lose them. More care and security, Apple, please! These are not just random snapshots.
Once again, Apple (thinks it) knows better than any of us who use the device what our photo layout should look like. Years ago on the Mac they updated and tossed out all my albums, because they believed I should not be using albums. There was no way to get that back, because, as they said, “they are all i date order now so it should be easy to find the items in your photos.” I said, I had an album of cat images, and they were taken a very different times.” “You can use search to find those.” Except it did not find all of them. SIGH!
This latest update is yet another attempt to make things more difficult to use and different because they can. They believe of they do not change the UI, you will not think they updated anything. I often wonder if Apple does enough user testing on these changes? Thank you for this article, very informative and helpful.
Dislike the new layout. Hate that the + function is buried at the bottom of each folder. Very inconvenient for folders with a lot of photos.
Absolutely terrible! I cannot stand that with each new update you go into my photos and rearrange everything. One of the worst: You keep showing me photos of my now deceased son. Beyond upsetting! In my opinion if you want changes in any update to any Apple system or product you should have every change as opt-in! I go into my settings and find things turned on that I turned off previously. Terrible invasion of my privacy and my preferences.
Great article! it helped me organize my photos.
The restyled photos app is absolute rubbish, i can’t find anything I want. Words just fail me, it has made me so angry.the suggestions about making it like the old version are just not good enough.
Can I have an app like old version to download and replace the new version. Please.
Awful now, worried about Apple destroying Pixelmator Pro.