Apple Photos in iOS 18 is all about finding memories faster

Apple has decided to revamp the Apple Photos app alongside iOS/iPadOS 18, focusing more on organization, search, and creating memories out of your existing photos and videos.

However, it’s taken a lot to get to this point, so users might get a slightly different photo experience than they’re used to when they open the new app in the fall with iOS 18. Apple has designed it with quite a bit of familiarity in mind, though, so it should be easy to get used to.

Just remember: a simple swipe down will put you back into the grid we’ve all seen since the dawn of the iOS Photos app.

Underneath the grid is where most of the new features live. The bottom half is all the photo collections and albums that Apple thinks you’ll want to see. You can re-organize the bottom section to be in any order you want. For example, you could load a pre-made album of your cat or kids at the top, have recent photos below, and have some smaller pinned albums that you use a lot below that. Basically, you can organize and re-order this section to your heart’s content. At the bottom of the app, there are even some wallpaper suggestions using the lock screen customization engine that was added to iOS 16.

Also near the bottom are two sections for sorting your library. The first is the same 16 different ‘media type’ options that are currently included in iOS 17, including Spatial videos, Bursts, RAWs, and much more. Below that is another section of sorted categories labelled ‘Utilities.’ This has been rounded out significantly compared to the previous version of iOS and now includes things like screenshots, illustrations, QR codes, recently saved documents, and so much more. There are a ton of options, but honestly, these granular filters should help people find niche documents and screenshots a little faster.

If that fails, one of the most exciting things about the new update is the improvements to photo search. Apple has added a ton of natural language options that help users search for targeted things. These can include people and what they’re doing, like “cycling last year” or “pictures of kids outside.”

Moving back to the top half of the grid, you can tap a new button in the bottom left to sort by date captured or recently added, which is really handy since you don’t need to open a recently added album anymore. There are also a few filter options in this section, so you can sort by favourites, edits, photos, videos or screenshots too. When you’re looking at the main screen with the half-grid, you can also swipe left and right to see more memory collections, favourites, featured photos and recently created slideshows of what you’ve been up to.