Apple proudly proclaimed that iOS 18 will see the “biggest redesign” for the Photos app on iPhone since it was introduced at WWDC 2024, but in reality, it’s seemingly not been panning out well for users.
In the latest issue of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple has seemingly walked back some of the changes made to Photos.
Suggesting the redesign was “probably a little too bold and potentially confusing”, Gurman said the most recent beta version of iOS 18 has removed the new carousel feature.
iOS 18’s Photos app gets another redesign
“It also tweaked the photo grid to be more user-friendly and pushed albums higher up into the app to require less scrolling,” Gurman said.
“Perhaps most critically, Apple moved saved content back into the main photo grid. These changes came at a key moment: Apple now considers iOS 18 to be complete and is preparing to add the software to the upcoming iPhone 16 line.”
We reported last month how Apple execs had been evangelizing the app’s more “personal” nature, but it appears it moved too quickly with the changes to one of the iPhone’s most-used apps – and didn’t want to wait until iPhone 16 to fix it.
How are you finding the new Photos app in the beta? I must admit I found it confusing at first, but it started to grow on me the more I used it.