iPhone 17 Pro Photos App consistently crashing and hanging

Update: Apple Support couldn’t really help me. I told them several times that the error occurs for multiple users and pointed them to the thread here. They just kept saying, “No, it has nothing to do with Shared Albums.”

So we tried everything: resetting network settings, deleting the Photos app, downloading it again, restarting multiple times, logging in to iCloud.com via browser — and then they told me to make a backup and reset my iPhone. I already did that yesterday, as I mentioned here this morning.

Now I reluctantly turned off my Shared Albums, and I doubt there will be a solution anytime soon if the problem keeps being ignored. I’ll probably have to spend the next few days backing up my Shared Albums from my other iPhone somewhere and saving them to the gallery. I don’t see any other way to access the photos from my new iPhone. Terrible. Spend several hours today trying to solve this.

Turned off shared albums half an hour ago and now everythings works fine btw! Photo App never worked for longer than 5 mins so I am positive it stays that way 🙃🙃🙃🙃

Hi, just wanted to come on here again since I posted earlier in this thread with the same persistent problem. I ran into this issue doing transfer to transfer and my only solution was erasing the iPhone and restoring my backup via iCloud instead. Was annoying since iCloud restore doesn’t feel as complete as data transfer but I think it’s worth trying since that pretty much fixed the photos issue for me. Before that my new phone was practically unusable

I hate to have to say it…just factory reset. I’ve had this issue since I got my iphone 17 three weeks ago, and today I called Apple. They ran three diagnostics tests and my phone was perfectly fine, but they were able to see the issue I was having with the camera and photos apps through screen sharing. I was instructed to do an iCloud back up, do a factory reset, and when setting up the phone again DO NOT click transfer from last iCloud Backup, DO NOT click transfer from other iPhone. Only move to the next step and log into your iCloud.

It takes a bit to sync (and now I have to redownload all my apps since I didn’t have those in my iCloud settings before), but at least the phone works.

I was dreading doing it, but honestly, it’s not so bad. Just factory reset.

I had the same issue but upgraded from iPhone 15 pr max to the iPhone 17 pro max.

i went into Apple and the only suggestion was to restart iPhone without transferring data from another phone or iCloud back up.

It was less hassle redownloading apps and logging back in than I thought.

fixed the problem though

Same issue. Took to apple support and they said the only solution was to wipe the phone and start from scratch which I didn't want to do. Found this thread, turned off shared albums, and bam, fixed. Thanks for the tip. Hopefully apple will fix this so we can use shared albums again.

I just reset my iPhone as well and set it up only through the iCloud login. Super annoying, and it definitely doesn’t feel complete. But it seemed like the only solution to keep using the shared albums. I really hope the issue is fixed now. I guess I’ll be stuck on my iPhone all day redownloading all the apps and setting everything up again until it’s back to normal. I hope the next years this problem won‘t appear again when getting the next new iPhone 😩

And yes, I had to reboot the phone and go directly to settings, apps, photos to disable the shared albums, because otherwise just going to settings, apps, photos crashed the settings app. But I did not have to factory reset the phone and reload ios.

Yes, disabling shared albums fixed the problem for me as well. It seems a software glitch in the photos app crashes the phone app. I hope Apple is monitoring this thread.

Hi,

Did your issue get fixed and stay fixed? Just got an iPhone 17 Pro and am facing the exact same issues as you on the list. Getting very frustrated. Is the only way to fix this erasing then restoring the iPhone?

I’m experiencing the exact same issue. I also upgraded from the 15 Pro to the 17 Pro. I’ve had the new phone for four days now, and it’s still not working. I’ve never encountered anything like this before — it’s extremely disappointing, and at this point I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. Basically, I can’t use the Photos app or the camera, and whenever I try to send screenshots or pictures to others, the app crashes. I am also not able to turn anything off like icloud synch or shared albums because it keeps crashing.

Reset my iPhone again and tried to set it up anew using data transfer from my old iPhone 15 Pro. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful — the problem is still there. I also tried upgrading my iCloud storage, but that didn’t help either. So it really seems like the only option is to turn off Shared Albums?

Will they reappear if I turn them back on in the future? I feel like my entire life — all my vacations with friends, all my pictures with friends in various shared albums — is in there, and I’m scared of losing them.

I also don’t dare sell my old iPhone, since all the data is still on it (which is really frustrating, because its value keeps dropping).

So do you know if all my Shared Albums will show up again when I re-enable them after the bug is fixed? I’m so annoyed — I’ve never experienced anything like this after an iPhone release, not in all these years.