iPhone 17 Pro Photos App consistently crashing and hanging

Alright, thank you! I contacted Apple Support this morning and also sent them the link to this thread to let them know that I’m not the only one experiencing this issue. They told me they’d look into it and will call me back this afternoon. I’ll keep you guys updated.

I’m experiencing this issue currently.

i had an iPhone 15 pro max which I hadn’t upgraded to ios26 yet.

i transferred my data to my new iPhone 17 pro max, instantly had issues with my camera and photo album.

i spoke to Apple in store and was told maybe a device issue and as I’ve only had it a day, request a replacement. Which started the process of swapping back to my iPhone 15, in doing so I upgraded to ios26.1 and with that transferred the issue over. I’m now experiencing the issue on my iPad which was fine until I changed over to the iPhone 17.

if anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear it please.

I have an appointment with the apple Genius Bar thursday and also have ordered a replacement 17 but if the issue persists, I’m not sure what to do.

my issue explained:

for info: I have 5,100 photos in my photos app. With 146GB of space available on my iPhone 15.

the 17 I purchased was 1TB so space wasn’t a concern either.

take a photo in the camera - doesn’t appear in photos app when I swap between the apps.

take photo in camera - app freezes

take photo in camera - appears in the left hand side view, unable to share, delete or quick click into photo album.

screenshots - a mystery. Sometimes save, sometimes don’t. Unable to share at time of screenshot

sharing photos - if I click to send a photo in any app like message or WhatsApp, it freezes and I have to restart the app to even get the keyboard back to type.

in app (for example, Instagram) if I went to share post from photos, no photos show up.

settings - if I try to look at camera or photos settings at all (even for specific apps) the entire thing crashes

i will turn my phone on and off to sort the issue but sometimes that doesn’t even resolve it and the images I took are missing still.

Screen recording - will just go round like it’s saving but never saves and crashes my entire phone

i have tried various things to resolve this (even upgraded my iCloud storage to 2TB). Would factory resetting my phone and setting it up from scratch work?

im just concerned im wasting my time doing so. I mean my iPad was fine ?? And since I transferred to the iPhone 17, it’s now across all my Apple devices.

im just not willing to turn off shared albums when I heavily rely on them for my memories.

thanks for any advice you can provide in advance. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this

Upgraded from 15 pro max to 17 pro max for the new zoom and cool down features. I photograph hummingbirds in particular. This camera is terrible. Every single shot is burry on the subject if zoomed. Video is worst zooming in and out on it’s own. Can’t find the subject. All my shots, hours of work and not 1 picture. The phone has also frozen twice and gone black for a s few seconds twice. So far I hate it and am mad that I lost so much time on it. Cross fingers they fix it with an update. I am also not a fan of the photo hard button. I keep taking pictures of my ear. Just make the button a bit smaller with a bigger gap for a thumb in the middle.

Being disappointed on my birthday summarizes this new (2) iPhone 17 max pro encounter. I NEVER upgrade my apple devices (I have 7) unless it no longer works for the fear of what everyone is complaining of. Monday I was gifted the iPhone 17 and the estimated transfer time said about one day (understandable with over 100,000

photos /vids). The next day I could view my photos but I when attempting to share them it would crash, freeze, or just sit blinking on the contacts name I choose but the picture never goes through. Then the screen turned black and stayed this way the whole ride back to the Apple Store, in which then the employee tried to tap the screen and it was not responsive, hence returning that device- only to upgrade to the iPhone 17 pro max (5tb). Three days and two brand new phones later, downloading and reinstalling apps, new verification/ passwords/ Face ID/ it’s become a full time job for it to STILL not work properly. I have the same issues as days ago, and I keep finding more issues: for decades on my previous iPhone when pics are texted , I can tap on that text thread to see all pics shared between us. NOW that option isn’t even there, so I cannot see all the photos shared with someone who we text back and forth regularly under that thread.

[Edited by Moderator]

I have this EXACT ISSUE TOO. Upgraded from the iPhone 11 to the 16 plus. I cannot send photos via iMessage (blank screen) cannot open photos app (frozen), cannot even open photos SETTINGs without everything freezing, camera randomly doesn’t work, can’t even change my phones background without it crashing. I got this phone for work and it’s useless.

JustDami wrote: …hopefully there is a patch for this soon, as photos without iCloud sync is useless to me

It seems like someone with this problem should let Apple know:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

How did you disable the shared albums? When I go to settings>photos it crashes. Same if I want to find the shared albums in the photos app it crashes