The New Photos App Is the Worst Thing to Happen to iOS Since the Safari Redesign

“It keeps your library organized and lets you find photos at full speed without requiring an elephant’s memory,” “everything is at your fingertips,” “you’ll spend less time searching and more time enjoying your memories.” Here’s how Apple describes one of the major new features of iOS 18 on its website: Photos app redesignThe company has completely overhauled the interface, eliminating the tabs that were previously located at the bottom and consolidating everything onto one page to offer a much more intuitive experience.

But after months of testing iOS 18, I’ve come to the conclusion that The new Photos app in iOS 18 is far from intuitive.. And it’s a disaster: probably the worst thing to happen to the iPhone operating system since the Safari redesign in iOS 15 — which, thankfully, Apple managed to fix.

In fact, as of today, right at the official launch of iOS 18, I still haven’t gotten used to the new app. The learning curve is extremely steep compared to other Apple apps; because almost nothing is where it used to be, and nothing is where it should be now.

iOS 18 Photos App or How to Download What’s Already Working

Let’s talk about the changes. The new interface of the iOS 18 Photos app, I repeat, now takes up one page– Absolutely everything, including recent albums, the favorites section, hidden and deleted photo folders, is in one place. Each of the sections is accessed using gestures: by swiping up, we can access all the photos and videos in the gallery, while a small menu of tabs appears for navigating by month or year, as well as the ability to sort them by date added or captured.

Sliding down, we find different sections that are activated by default. One of them is called “Last days” and allows you to view images and videos taken or saved during the day. Just below is album sectionPreviously available in a single tab, only albums that the user has created manually are displayed here.

That is, the Favorites album from the iOS Photos app does not appear here, but only in another section called Pinned Collections. You can also access photos and videos tagged as Favorites by swiping up in the app to access all photos, sliding the drop-down menu that allows you to search by date, and then clicking the arrow icon that appears on the left side of the screen. And then click the Filter button. And finally, click Favorites.

In other words, What used to be two steps is now five.It took me weeks to discover this on an app I use every day.

In addition to the sections discussed, There are others that are crowded on the main page. iOS 18 Photos apps. Among them, one about travel, another with people and pets, a third with featured photos, and of course, a section that allows you to search by content type (e.g. videos, selfies, Live Photos) and an “Other” section where you can access hidden, recently deleted or duplicate images.

Redesign requires redesign

Certainly, The new Photos app for iOS 18 has its advantagesIn fact, I can’t deny that it’s visually beautiful: albums have new animations, and the icon style is similar to what we see in VisionOS.

Apple, fortunately – since the first beta versions did not have this – iOS 18’s Photos app gets more customizablewhich allows you to remove and reorder sections of the home screen and improve search. The problem is that the user’s goal should not be to make it simpler and more convenient, but rather, by default, it should be simpler and more minimalistic. Not to mention that there is no way to return to previous navigation tabs, which made it much easier to access different albums.

In fact and in my opinion, Apple should never have removed tabbed browsing in the iOS 18 Photos app, but by simply getting rid of unnecessary sections like For You. I don’t want an app filled with “smart” features that remind me that two years ago I stopped at a gas station in Mostoles and took five photos and a video of my brother doing a handstand. I want my albums and photos to be marked as favorites before any other section.

There is no doubt that iOS 18’s Photos App Redesign Needs a Redesign. Or at least go back to a slightly improved previous design. Apple has time to do what it did with Safari: undo the changes and leave everything as it was. Or give the user the option to choose between tabbed browsing or putting everything on one page.