Is there a way to revert photos app after IOS 18

I did what this posting says and it didn’t work. I too am having difficulty with the way photos now appears. I hate it. Still looking to see what the name of third party phot app is. Thanks for the help. 🙏🏼

Thank you for your detailed advice. I still haven’t updated but will have to of course. When I get some uninterrupted time will bite the bullet. I don’t mind change but just don’t want to lose the albums I have created which include photos copied from friends and Facebook, not just iPhone pics.. All 300 albums. Your description makes it clearer. And I do back up all devices to iCloud. (MacBook Air, iMac and iPad). I have an iPhone 15 Pro and am leaving for Europe on Wednesday so more pics will be added!!

Zurarczurx,

Have you looked at your Photos in iCloud.com? I'm curious if you see any issues there. The format on iCloud.com has not changed from Photos app in iOS 17. Exactly the same! So, I am wondering if that has anything to do with the issues that some people may be having.

I don't use iCloud for photos. I don't use Photos on Mac. I use Photos on iPhone only as a viewer. I don't use albums or any of its classification features or faces or places or objects. None of my photos has GPS either on my camera or on the iPhone - I decide where they were taken, not the device. I don't want anyone or anything messing with my photos other than me. If I could stop iPhone scanning my photos for faces, objects and places then I would. My photos are far too important to me to have someone else deciding what's in them. The best thing about the removal of the only useful feature (for me) from Photos might be that I get off my backside and find a decent app for managing them.

There are posts on this thread from people who use Photos like I do who are complaining about the functionality being removed. There are a lot of other recent Photos discussions along the same lines and many of those complaining also use it like I do or relied on the Recents/Camera Roll functionality. If you don't synch your photos to Mac Folders via Finder then you can't possibly know that previous versions of Photos separated these pics from pics taken with iPhone and how important that had become to people's workflow.

There are a lot of people, like you, who really want to help but because we use photos in such fundamentally different ways you see this mostly as a problem of presentation and organization which just needs getting used to whereas we see it as key function/capability of Photos being removed with no alternative provided - and this has caused some friction over the subject, which is a shame. I suspect that the teams who decided on this change don't use Photos like I do and they too would be mystified by the clamour that people like me are making about it if they read these discussions.

I've got a work round, I can live with it, but I suspect that Photos is going to get worse for people like me, not better.

I have to agree with you here. Apple forums on the net seem to be full of people complaining about the new app. I use an iPad Pro and fortunately it still has the sidebar. This is my main way of navigating my photos (I use album to sort them) but it’s the interface that’s driving me crazy. I’m not alone. There’s categories I don’t use, like pets and trips, but I can’t get rid of them. My biggest complaint is if I scroll too far up suddenly I get the movie mode. This is annoying but I can’t seem to find a setting to shut it off. I use my iPad to edit photo, mostly sent to me, so I really could care less for this movie memory thing.

I despise the new photos update. I work at a doggy daycare and have to take hundreds of photos, and many videos everyday. The new update has completely ruined my organization and I hate how hard it is to scroll through a video to different parts now. Why is the edit button in a new spot? Why don’t the videos take up the full screen anymore until you click it to full screen, but then I can’t scroll through the video or play or pause while it’s full screen?

NandoGolfMan wrote:

I do not like the new IOS18 photo option and want to revert to the old one. It is so unorganized and confusing and frustrating to use. Please help me get back to the old way.

From Mac Jim ID's post in this thread from December 3rd,

https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/hate-ios-18s-new-photos-app-try-these-fixes-to-make-it-more-like-the-old-version

Hi! Where do you have a sidebar in your iPhone in iOS 18 Photos? If you are referring to Photos on the iPad, first, this thread is about Photos on the iPhone and secondly, you can't remove anything from the sidebar in iOS 18 Photos on the iPad. You weren't able to remove things from the sidebar in iOS 17 either. You can only do customization on the other part of Photos. Similar to how you customize Photos on the iPhone.

Yeah, I got rid of the previews. But if I scroll too far up it turns into a movie. This super annoying. It was wondering if I can turn off that function all together. I never used it before. Now it’s in my face.

I've spent a bit of time now with this new version. It definitely had different readjust. I got rid of all the clutter.

I would like to revert to a previous iOS. The photo app is awful on the new version! All the time I spent organizing my photos with the caption, you can’t search for them a caption. Also, if there’s something unique in the photo, a word or something similar, it won’t pull it up. This is an awful app. I want control over my photo library! Is there any way to revert back to the previous iOS?

The photo app on the iPhone is probably one of the most important features. The new update is a nightmare, even if you recheck options. Whoever thought this was a good idea obviously never uses this feature. Good grief! Please return to the previous format with the next update to indicate that you actually care about your iPhone users.

“Yer_Man - This strikes me an excellent example of someone upgrading without ensuring that the new version met their needs and desires, rather than anything Apple has done.”

Apple keeps reminding us every day that we need to upgrade. So is easy to mistakenly click yes.

I always look for a security reason to upgrade, that happened last week with the emergency update to 18.1.1

… but there was also a security patch 17.7.2 hidden in the urgent message.

Wish they would restore some iTunes functionality instead of adding new features that are actually downgrades.

This new update on a Photos app is absolutelly horrible, messy and broken. I draw using an iPad and the app saves all the photos to the recents unless i manually move them elsewhere, which has now became an absolute nightmare because of this update. I hate it, hate the OS as it is. I use an Android phone and only got an iPad for drawing but since i got it i came to conclusion that the only good thing about it is the hardware. I hate the software, almost everything about it is terrible and now the only thing that was kind of okay is hundred times worse than it used to be

Apple, I hate what you have done to photos and video on the iPhone. Why do you keep messing with it? Leave it alone it is now extremely frustrating and difficult to use. I’m about to leave Apple products.