Hands-on with the all-new iOS 18 Photos app

iOS 18 brings the biggest redesign ever to the Photos app. Whether you just downloaded the public beta of this upcoming operating system or you’re looking forward to trying it for yourself, BGR has been testing iOS 18 since day one of the developer’s beta. Now, we can offer readers a hands-on look at the all-new Photos app, including the new features, tweaks, and more.

iOS 18 Photos app’s new features

All-new design: Forget about the sidebar. The new iOS 18 Photos app focuses on a single view with everything you need. Scroll down to see your collections, media types, memories, trips, albums, and more. Scroll up to see your library.

New Carousel: Swipre right from the grid to access the new Carousel, which highlights your best content in a beautiful, poster-like view. It displays a new set of photos each day for a fun surprise.

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Trip albums: iOS 18 now intelligently creates albums for your trips. You can find it in the down part of your app, and it’s a nice way to find your latest travels.

Wallpaper Suggestions: At the bottom of iOS 18’s Photos app, you get wallpaper suggestions from Apple using on-device machine learning to analyze your gallery.

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Collections: Collections automatically organize your library by topics like Recent Days, Trips, and People & Pets. Pinned Collections gives you lightning-fas access to the collections or albums most important to you.

Better settings: When you tap your Apple Account photo in the upper right corner of the Photos app, you can find the app’s settings. You can opt to hide the Shared Album Activity or the Hidden Album. You can also choose not to auto-play videos and live photos or view full HDR. iOS 18 even lets you decide whether you want to see holiday events and featured content as well.

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Improved search: Before searching for a specific photo or memory, Apple also suggests some possible queries, such as dinner with your mom, that trip you made last year, or pictures with your pets.

Hide and lock app: Although this is a system-wide feature, I love that I can lock the Photos app with Face ID and, ultimately, hide it on my iPhone . If you have a working phone or usually have sensitive media, being able to lock it is better than using the hidden album, which can be accessed with a passcode.

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Photos app’s first impressions

At first, iOS 18’s all-new Photos app seems to have a lot going on. However, Apple actually found a better way to display an ever-growing library of photos and videos. I especially enjoy the new Trips section, which made me realize I should travel more often.

The Recent Days collection is also a nice way to easily find that photo you took recently. Finally, “People & Pets” got the premium spot it always deserved. After naming all the faces from my library, seeing a more customizable experience is nice.

Image source: José Adorno for BGR

I also find it easier to search for the images I want, and it’s nice that Apple removed the screenshots in the main gallery. Once Apple Intelligence is available, the Photos app in iOS 18 will get even more features, so I can’t wait to try them out and share my thoughts with you.

Wrap up

So far, this is everything new with the Photos app in iOS 18. BGR will make sure to share more with you once we learn new details about this update. Below, you can discover other features of iOS 18.

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