People have strong opinions about the iOS 18 Photos app. While this has been one of the most disliked updates Apple has ever made, I was one of the users who enjoyed the changes. For example, the redesign made finding and reliving special moments easier thanks to the single-view display. New collections help me browse themes without organizing my photos into albums, and separating screenshots from all the photos was a nice addition.
More importantly, iOS 18.2 brought other significant updates, such as the ability to sort albums alphabetically, by date created, or manually, improvements when viewing videos, and navigating through Collection views.
While the iOS 18 Photos app design can be fixed, users continue to face other problems, such as the “Indexing Your Library” issue. I’ve also been missing some of the iOS 18 Photos app features, and I don’t know how to get them back.
Two features have stopped working for me: The automatic Trips collection and Wallpaper Suggestions. While the latter didn’t make much of a difference for me for the brief moment it was available, I really miss my Trips collection.
It made me realize I wasn’t traveling as much as I’d wanted when it was available. While I always preferred going abroad, I realized I wasn’t even traveling to visit my mother or other places I usually went. However, as I started traveling more, I realized the Photos app forgot to create those memories. The syncing issues are numerous:
- It forgets to add small trips.
- It splits a single trip to a new place into two options.
- It says I traveled to a specific location, while the photos show a different one.
- Trips I made a few years ago refuse to show up.
While a possible fix could be signing out of my Apple Account and then signing back in, every Apple user knows the nightmare of doing that. In addition, it doesn’t matter how long I keep my phone charging, whether with the screen on or not, the Photos app doesn’t seem to sync anything. It feels like the Index Your Library issue is only getting worse as new updates roll out.
My last hope is that iOS 19 beta 1 will be enough to fix the iOS 18 Photos app (I’m not saying it will be better), and maybe something will change inside my phone. Interestingly, the same happens on my iPad and Mac, so it feels like a widespread bug through my Apple Account.
Have you encountered the same issue? Send me a message at [email protected].
