DB Labs
The Short Answer: What Changed in iOS 18 Photos?
iOS 18 gave the Photos app its biggest redesign since iOS 10. The four bottom tabs (Library, For You, Albums, Search) are gone, replaced by a single scrollable Library view with Pinned Collections at the top. Albums still exist but are now found by scrolling down in the Library, and the navigation is significantly different from what long-time iPhone users were used to.
The redesign also brought genuinely new features: customizable Collections, an improved Memories experience powered by Apple Intelligence, a new Clean Up editing tool, and natural language photo search. Not everything was an upgrade — many users found the new layout confusing at first — but once you know where things moved, it's navigable.
The Biggest Change: No More Bottom Tabs
In iOS 17 and earlier, the Photos app had four tabs along the bottom of the screen:
- Library — your full camera roll
- For You — Memories, Shared with You, Featured Photos
- Albums — all your albums organized by category
- Search — keyword search across your library
In iOS 18, all four tabs have been merged into a single scrollable view. The Photos app now opens directly to your Library — a scrollable page that includes everything: your photos at the top, followed by Pinned Collections, followed by your Albums, followed by Utilities. The bottom navigation bar now shows only Library and Search — just two items instead of four.
The idea behind the redesign is that everything you need is one continuous scroll rather than separated across tabs. In practice, this means the app is simpler to orient in — but finding things that used to be one tap away now requires scrolling or knowing the new layout.
New: Pinned Collections
The most prominent new feature in the iOS 18 Photos layout is Pinned Collections — a row of large cards that appear below your photo grid in the Library view. By default, these include:
- People & Pets — recognized faces in your library, including pets
- Memories — curated slideshows from your photo history (now enhanced with Apple Intelligence on compatible devices)
- Featured Photos — Apple's selection of your best shots
- Trips — photos organized by travel destinations
- Days, Months, Years — grouped chronological views
- Shared Albums — albums shared with others via iCloud
The key improvement over iOS 17: you can reorder and hide these collections. Scroll to the bottom of the Library view and tap Customize & Reorder. Drag any collection up or down to change its position, or tap the minus button to hide it entirely. If you never use Trips but check People & Pets daily, you can put People & Pets first and hide Trips.
iOS 17 Photos vs. iOS 18 Photos: Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | iOS 17 | iOS 18 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navigation | 4 bottom tabs: Library, For You, Albums, Search | 2 bottom tabs: Library and Search; everything else scrolls in Library | Changed |
| Albums access | Albums tab — one tap from anywhere | Scroll down in Library view to Albums section | Changed |
| For You tab | Dedicated tab with Memories, Featured, Shared with You | Removed as a tab; content integrated into scrollable Library view | Removed |
| Photo Search | Keyword-based search with People/Places filters | Natural language AI search ("sunset at the beach last summer") | Upgraded |
| Memories | Auto-generated slideshows, theme-based | Enhanced by Apple Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro / iPhone 16; more contextual curation | Upgraded |
| People & Pets | People album under Albums tab | Upgraded to People & Pets Collection — now recognizes pets by face/name | Upgraded |
| Shared with You | Section in For You tab — showed photos shared via Messages | Removed from Photos; shared content is now accessed from the Messages app | Removed |
| Clean Up Tool | Not available | New AI tool in Edit view — removes objects from within a photo | New |
New Features in iOS 18 Photos
Enhanced Natural Language Search
The Search tab in iOS 18 has been significantly upgraded with AI-powered natural language understanding. Instead of searching for "beach" and getting every photo with sand, you can now search for "photos of the kids at the beach in summer 2023" and get a contextually relevant result. The search understands people, places, activities, objects, colors, and time — and on Apple Intelligence-compatible devices, the results are even more accurate.
Search is still accessed via the Search tab at the bottom of the Photos app — one of the only two tabs that survived the redesign.
Clean Up Tool (AI Object Removal)
The Clean Up tool is a new editing feature available on all iPhones running iOS 18, powered by machine learning. To use it:
- Open a photo in the Photos app.
- Tap Edit in the top right.
- Tap the Clean Up icon in the toolbar at the bottom (it looks like a magic wand or eraser).
- Tap or circle the object you want removed.
- The AI analyzes the surrounding pixels and fills in the background.
- Tap Done to save.
Clean Up works best on small, distinct objects against relatively consistent backgrounds. It's less effective on large objects or complex, busy backgrounds. The original photo is preserved unless you tap Done — if you don't like the result, tap Cancel to revert.
Improved Memories with Apple Intelligence
On iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models running iOS 18.1+, Memories are enhanced by Apple Intelligence. The AI creates more thematically cohesive slideshows — grouping photos around concepts and narratives rather than just date ranges — and selects music more contextually. On devices without Apple Intelligence, Memories work similarly to iOS 17 but with some UI improvements.
People & Pets Collection
iOS 18 upgraded the People album to "People & Pets." The app now uses the same face recognition technology it uses for people to identify pets — cats, dogs, and other animals — and assigns them names you provide. Your pets show up in the People & Pets collection alongside people, and you can search for them by name. This is a genuinely useful update for the large number of iPhone users who photograph their pets regularly.
Customizable Layout
As noted above, the Customize & Reorder button at the bottom of the Library view lets you hide, show, and reorder every section and collection in the Photos app. This is the most direct response to the layout complaints that immediately followed iOS 18's release — Apple gave users the tools to configure the app for their own usage patterns.
What's Gone or Significantly Changed from iOS 17
Removed For You Tab
The For You tab — which housed Memories, Featured Photos, Shared with You, and Shared Album Activity — is gone as a discrete section. Memories and Featured Photos are now in the Pinned Collections area of the Library view. Shared with You content has been moved entirely out of Photos and into the Messages app and other apps where the content was originally shared.
Removed Shared with You in Photos
In iOS 17, the For You tab included a "Shared with You" section showing photos that friends sent you in Messages. In iOS 18, this section was removed from Photos entirely. To see photos shared with you via Messages, you now go to the Messages conversation and view them there, or check the Shared Albums section if they were shared via iCloud Photo Sharing.
Changed Albums Tab Removed — Albums Are Still There
Albums as a concept still exist in full — Smart Albums, shared albums, manually created albums, and the default system albums (Screenshots, Videos, Selfies, etc.) are all intact. What's changed is how you reach them. Instead of the Albums tab at the bottom, you scroll down in the Library view to find the Albums section. Tap any album name to open it. The albums themselves work identically to iOS 17.
Changed Recently Deleted Location
Recently Deleted moved. It's now found by scrolling to the bottom of the Library view, in the Utilities section, alongside other administrative albums like Duplicates and Hidden. The path is longer than in iOS 17, where Recently Deleted was directly in the Albums tab. See the detailed navigation instructions below.
Where Things Moved: A Navigation Guide
How to Find Recently Deleted in iOS 18
This is the question most users have after updating to iOS 18 — and it's important because Recently Deleted is where you go to permanently free up storage.
scroll to Albums section → scroll further down →
Utilities section → Recently Deleted
Alternatively: use the Search tab and type "Recently Deleted" — it will appear as a result you can tap directly.
How to Find Albums in iOS 18
Albums section → tap any album
How to Find Hidden Photos in iOS 18
Viewing Hidden photos requires Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode, same as in iOS 17.
How to Access Duplicates in iOS 18
The Duplicates album was introduced in iOS 16 and is unchanged in iOS 18. It shows pairs or groups of similar photos so you can merge or delete the extras.
What the iOS 18 Redesign Means for Your Storage
The short answer: the redesign has no effect on how much storage your photos use. iOS 18 changes the interface and navigation — the underlying files, compression, and storage footprint are identical to iOS 17.
The slightly longer answer: there is one indirect storage consideration. The new layout makes the path to Recently Deleted longer, which means some users who regularly cleared their Recently Deleted album in iOS 17 now do it less often — simply because it's harder to find. If you notice your storage not freeing up as expected after deleting photos, check whether you've been emptying Recently Deleted.
The iOS 18 Photos redesign also introduced the AI-generated images from Image Playground and Genmoji, which are stored in your Photos library. These features can increase your photo count over time. This isn't caused by the Photos app redesign itself — it's a side effect of the Apple Intelligence features that arrived alongside it.
iOS 18 Photos Redesign: User Reactions and Apple's Response
The iOS 18 Photos redesign was unusually controversial for Apple. Within days of the iOS 18 release, significant user feedback reached Apple noting that the new layout was harder to navigate than the four-tab design, with the Albums section particularly difficult to reach quickly. Apple responded in iOS 18.1 by adding the Customize & Reorder button and making the layout more configurable — giving users the ability to pin Albums higher in the list and reduce the amount of scrolling required.
As of iOS 18.2 and later, the app is still significantly different from iOS 17, but the customization options make it more adaptable to different users' habits. If you haven't yet customized your Photos layout, scroll to the bottom of the Library view and tap Customize & Reorder — it's worth a few minutes to set up.
Cleaning Your Camera Roll Still Works the Same Way
The iOS 18 Photos redesign changed a lot — but the fundamentals of camera roll cleanup haven't changed. Blurry photos, duplicates, and unwanted shots are still sitting in your library taking up space. Swype makes reviewing them fast: one photo at a time, swipe left to delete, right to keep. Works perfectly on iOS 18.
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If you've noticed photos behaving unexpectedly after the iOS 18 update, see our article on iPhone photos that seem to have disappeared — often they're just in a new location in the redesigned app. For a complete guide to deleting photos efficiently, check our how to select all photos and delete guide. And if you want the fastest possible camera roll cleanup experience on iOS 18, Swype Photo Cleaner is built exactly for that.