Name: Photos
Rating: 3.69505 (5660 reviews)

User Reviews for Photos

3.7 out of 5

5.7K Ratings

6 months ago, Ur mother 123.

good app ! But ……

Sup , I like this app :) it’s nice whenever I wanna take a photo of something or a video or just have to have plain fun. The app is always there. I love every feature about it, but there is one thing that does bother me. this part of my review is specifically for the creators of this app. Your feature portrait is amazing one of my favorites but it’s hard to take a nice photo with portrait. I want to get a close-up or I want to get some thing far away but still get that portrait like affect. because it tells me to get closer or move far away even though it’s the opposite of what I want to do to get the photo. When you think about problems and things you wanna do to make people like the app better this probably isn’t your biggest concern but I wanted to put it out there just to see if there’s anyway my problem could be fixed, even though there is a very slim chance of that happening.

1 year ago, Steel Drums

Terrible widget and people curation

As an Apple fan, it is frustrating to have to write this. The Photos widget only ever finds 1-3 (and always the same) out of 3000+ photos or 200 “recents” photos to “feature”. Also, the widget never shows memories that are curated by the “create photos memory” option. Memories can’t be made “less” except by person or date - and yet it keeps coming up with memories that I don’t want at all and have to keep deleting (the algorithm is severely limited!). And no matter how many memories are generated, the widget never shows more than a recent few - so much for being shown things from my beautiful intensely curated library. And once there is a featured photo to show, the widget will won’t show any Memories. The widget also has long ago been switched to giant text captions which can’t be deleted (and I’m tired of having to edit everything all the time) and absolutely ruins the “beauty” Apple keeps selling in their “wow-look what we did” product announcements. And the people curation on iOS hasn’t found anyone in over a year (empty) and then suddenly last week found (only) two people (out of 3000+ photos) - and then it stopped. Useless. And this is a problem reported by many people as evidenced in many online discussions and yet never solved by Apple support personnel involved in those discussions and never in the bug fix releases either. Very disappointing Apple!

2 days ago, Danyel Shaikh

ios 18 ruined it

I’ve been using the photos app as long as I can remember, and I’ve loved it so much. The tabs made navigation so great, where you switch switch from your main photos library quickly to searching something up that you remembered, than going back exactly where you were in your photos library. I just loved how there were multiple pages too- everything was so organized and perfect. You could also see the most recent photo in your albums nice and big like always. But now, I can’t stand this everything in one page design. Multitasking within the photos app is ruined, making it so hard to go from viewing photos in your main library to searching something up and then looking at photos in your albums all at the same time by the click of a tab change. So so upset about this. The old app had nostalgia to it too as I’ve literally been using it since i was a kid - i’m 17 now and got my first iphone when I was 10. There’s nothing about this redesign of the photos app that I like. Its downgraded so much, becoming more complex by attempting to simplify it. It’s also worth noting how glitchy it is, as it keeps freezing while I’m searching and opening photo albums. Please please PLEASE bring back the old app, or at least an option in settings where you can bring the old app design back, similar to how you can switch your safari tab view in settings. Please. 🙏

2 years ago, RST Clerk

Wrecked People album

Update: 6-3-22 No fix in sight for the People identification issues. Still no way to permanently identify people (so that they can’t be “unidentified” again and again by the horrendous algorithm), still no way to manually add people to the people album without Apple doing it first. And the response is just to typically Apple, which is to say, no response at all. No concern. No fix. Hey, we’ve still got our trillions—why should we care about the customer experience? This (Photos) truly is the worst botched update I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’m either not going to use it anymore, or I’m I going to find a new phone. Because this is absolutely ridiculous. Previous Review: You took a functional (albeit limited and often error filled) feature—the People album—and you’ve rendered it unusable. Now it constantly, randomly resets key photos that I’ve selected, and it un-identifies people I’ve spent hours tagging, so it’s literally like starting over again every single time I charge my phone! From a company that still hasn’t managed to duplicate 2009 technology in some of its native apps (cough, cough, Pages, cough), this update is the biggest train wreck I’ve ever seen. I guess the days of “it just works” are gone forever. I was one of your biggest fanboys, but you continue to erode brand loyalty with a complete and utter lack of caring when it comes to attention to detail.

1 week ago, Pretty awesome chicky

IOS 18 RUINED this app

The way the photos app has been changed is bad enough to make me want to uninstall IOS 18 all together to go back to IOS 17. This is quite literally the dumbest and worst change made to what was previously such a beautiful and seamless app. Whoever the developer was on this should be fired, and you guys should change it back to the old way. I could go on and on about everything I hate about it, but it would be far too long for this forum. Let’s just say that there is not one aspect of this new app design that is worth while. Please go back to the old version, as we are all begging you. No one wants a continuous scroll. We want our tabs back and we want it NOW! I was planning on upgrading to an iPhone 16 Pro Max (from my 13 Pro Max) but will not be doing so if this is not reversed or fixed. If you guys are so keen about money and being high tech, you’d think you’d listen to the people you’re trying to convince to buy your products. Idea: allow users to return to the old photos version and have it as a setting labeled “classic organization” and have the other weird option for the people who want it (still have yet to find anyone who likes it, but to spare the developer’s feelings). Please don’t make us wait until iOS 19 as I will give up on Apple by then

12 months ago, Ascent4815

Good App, but connection with Google Photos is significantly lacking

Let me start of by saying that the Apple photos app is not bad from the limited amount of time I’ve used it and integrates well into the phone. However as a long time Google photos user, Apples support of the app is horrible. You should be allowed in settings to switch between or prioritize/make default the photo app of your choice. Not only is Google photos hard to use on IPhone with its limited integration, I still to this day have not found an easy way to switch all my photos over from Google to Apple Photos; so even if I wanted to switch over I literally cannot find a way to get my photos over or sync them between services. I switched from Pixel to IPhone and have been loving the phone so far, but Apple’s inexplainable desire to keep everything in their “walled garden” is ruining the experience for me and people who want to/are accustomed to using a non-Apple service and how horribly they integrate into messages, apps, and the system as a whole. Please fix Apple or at least work with Google a little so we can use the services of choice on our platform of choice.

2 months ago, SuperMarioFan155

I tried to find a tutorial how to get rid of a photo album but makes nonsense.

I think HihGamers right, Apple are you taking this next 100% level of being ridiculous and stupid or even worst? I tried finding every tutorial to get rid of a photo album and it’s tutorial thing makes sense for a second, But now it gets nonsense that says “drag the photo album, and I tried dragging a photo album and nothing happened, nothing dragged or anything just that, This is why you never trust apple man this apple app is the main cause all of it because this takes anger torture to a whole new level. Edit: Your 50 month for free storage is just nah that is just way too expensive, Lower your freaking price to like 5.99 man, Freaking stupid app photos has gotten today, Like deleting photos to free up storage doesn’t work, Like I can’t just delete everything in one piece god dam. Edit 2: Moon light studios your review talking about the haters isn’t right, You probably don’t understand what the horrible things and issues has gotten into photos, When I delete a photo or a video just for storage, It doesn’t work so get that straight because old devices do this kind of stuff to make me mad.

11 months ago, goose guinea pig

Good!

If you have a newer phone, the phone has a theme called portrait. It blurs out the background and you can see you. Also they have Live Photos, which when you press down on the picture the picture has the motion that the thing was doing. There is a search option, and a memories option. The memories option lets you see things that you did with a day or a year. It adds music (that you can change) and goes through photos of that day/year. If you swipe down, you can add a caption to your video/photo. You also can see the species or kind of plant by pressing a button. If it’s a plant, tap the leaf button. If it’s a dog, tap the paw. When you tap it, it gives you facts about it. It shows pictures too! You also can name people. When you name them it shows up in the search. When you tap on them you see photos of that person. Of course, on top of the photos it shows the date, and place!

11 months ago, Diprotic

Too redundant

Why are there so many steps to having to select and move photos around? Why are there so many steps when I want to delete or recover photos? I feel like there’s a lot of redundancy here that is absolutely unnecessary and doesn’t add any layer of “mistake-proof-actions”. Furthermore, when backing up my photographs to a cloud service. The photographs that I have starred don’t get moved to their own album rather it just creates like a hyperlink album. So when I back up my photos, and then delete the photos from my phone, all the photos that I have starred, go along with it, making the action of starring Photos absolutely in completely useless. Also, why can I just press and hold onto select a photo? Why can’t I order prints? Why do I have to export my photos to Files which is a file system emulator just to manipulate the photos in a certain way? I don’t understand apples thinking behind this do you want us to use Files which is a file system emulator or do you not want us to use Files? What’s the reasoning in logic behind splitting certain medium manipulation functions, such as removing the background to a whole separate app?

4 months ago, Trickypa

Suggested quality of life features

A huge time saver would be if I could save photo “Adjust” settings so that I could apply the same settings in one tap to each photo instead of having to slide through each individual setting for every additional photo. Even more amazing would be if we could sync these saved “Adjust” profiles to the camera app, and be able to have them applied to new photos real-time (could have restrictions on which settings can be applied live like exposure, as necessary). Also a potential great time saver would be if “Auto” adjust could simultaneously pull up a mini straightening wheel and crop markers, and have it be the default to open up to rather than “Focus”. Or alternatively, have this special “Auto & Crop” option appear as the magic wand icon right next to Edit, an alternative to doing the full photo edit. It would be so convenient to be able to rapidly use the auto adjust, straightening and cropping with a single tap - a one-stop-shop for quick photo edits.

2 years ago, Awful app delete it now

LOVE ITTT

HELLO :D photos is fantastic and is perfect for when I have to crop my screenshots for my yt vids!! It is time consuming but at least it can’t let u and crop it in chunks and instead pixel by pixel!! But if I was forced to say what the worst part of the app was it would be.. paying for storage. Im not an adult so I can’t pay stuff without help and my parents are ignoring the paying it’s okay with me! But considering in a part of me like I HAVE TO REMOVE PICS I DIDNT WANT TO LAST YEAR FOR 3 YeArS and it SUCKED so please make it free so my phone doesn’t explode.. :C other than that LOVE ITTT (Oh and 1 more thing PLEASEEE ADD COLOR FILL TO THE CUSTOMIZER PART OF THE APP it is SUPER time consuming like I spend a WEEK ON EACH CHARACTER so either make a free app about it or make the customizing part of the app like an actual drawing app like sketchbook or better like procreate Ik I’m asking for a lot but idc the customizing part of the app looks sad just.. sad) love the game byeeeeeeeee!! Yt channel: Alissa’s Gacha universe

5 months ago, ggffrroo

Mediocre UX

Photos is terrible for users who want to manage and organize their photos. Yes, albums can be created, but Apple still dumps everything into Recents and it all stays there even if the photo is added to an album. This is infuriating to users who want a clean, organized set of photos without having to sift through thousands in Recents and without them appearing in both places once they are found and added to album. The filter functionality is marginal, and doesn’t include tags or captions. Smart Album functionality is only on the Mac, so even if you do set up smart albums, they won’t show up on phone or iPad. Hidden album is just a repeat of the mindless dumping ground approach that Apple inflicts on its users. There are plenty of reasons why someone might want to hide a photo, but that just fills another unorganized pile because albums can’t be created within. Terrible if you want to find a hidden photo down the road. Come on Apple…why are you so averse to giving users basic organizing features? This app feels like it hasn’t had any sort of meaningful update in a decade, and you need to do better.

5 months ago, Satanic Goldfish

Markup update is AWFUL

I have always used the markup function FREQUENTLY. It actually used to work fine but now (17.4.1) if you are adding a shape (in my case an arrow) it snap-locks the orientation of the shape either 90 degrees, 45 degrees or flat. If you are marking up a photo without these THREE SPECIFIC ANGLES it becomes near impossible to edit. Your only option becomes going “back” with the back arrow to prior edit states… but wait, it gets better! I mean WORSE. If you go “back” it becomes nearly impossible to select your shape for editing by tapping on it (like you used to) and you end up only making dots or lines with the paintbrush tool! Then if you go “back” one step to far you are prevented from going “forward” a single step. I finally gave up on adding arrows and just tried adding text and even that is more difficult than it used to be. Please bring back the old functionality or AT LEAST give us the option to turn on/off snap locking angles. Honestly, I’ve seen some terrible updates but this one may take the prize of being apple’s worst update since initially removing the MagSafe charger connection.

1 year ago, ✨ jUsT lEyA ✨

Amazing!…

Honestly, everybody uses Google Photos, and it is a very nice developed app. But, the reason why I only gave it 4 stars is because of the storage. I know its not just from the photos, it’s also from all your apps too. So, about the storage is that my settings ALWAYS tells me,” yOuR iClOuD sToRaGe Is ToO fUlL…” ok, I know I might seem like a brat but there is always something wrong. And then I am always having to buy more storage, and it’s super annoying. I really hope the developer reads this because it means a lot to save memories! Anyway, its not that negative though, because it is very nice that you can actually keep photos and memories in to store. I really hope this helps. No bugs or fixes though, I haven’t had any problems that are actually causing me to do anything like that, so, thank you for reading!!!❤️ Have an amazing day✨✨✨

3 years ago, 5ide5hoe

Can we admit apple ain’t what she used to be?

You know, back when everything worked 100% of the time, when Wozniak was working tirelessly for a narcist who just wanted it now, but in a cool box . The photo searching barely works. Grouping by location always excludes half the content I’m looking for. (add more criteria to grouping/search algorithm? idk) it’s cute my phone recognizes some people every once in a while but not nearly enough to make the feature that useful. And last but not least why am I forced to use all these horrible songs to try and create a photo album why can’t I just add whatever music I want from whatever source whoever is curating the selection either has a very poor library in front of them or they have horrible taste. How about some real database AI. In the past I’ve stayed with Apple because I’ve became entrenched in the iCloud since 2010 when I was editing video…And I don’t do that anymore I think it’s time for a change, what kind of phone PC tag team is waz using?

3 years ago, bparker02

Hide photos once put in an album or give a sorting option

There is nothing else I need to add. Everything is great about the built-in photos app, map searching, face searching, item searching… But there is one thing that I cannot believe has NEVER been added. I’ll repeat that, there is one thing that we do in life with everything but the most basic photos app just didn’t do. There are several 3rd party apps that do this but I want these to still be in the cloud. Once I have moved a photo into an album, I want the photo to disappear from the main set of photos. I know this sounds ridiculous /s but once I have sorted the photo, it’s still nice to be able to add them to another album which is already an option. But I want the photos to disappear from the main album so I know they been sorted. Maybe just give us a filtering option in the main folder to hide photos that are already in an album.

3 years ago, granny smith apple

Translate feature DOES NOT EXIST??!?

Ok the feature does and does not exist. I went to search engine and typed in Japan headline news and one of the listings had Japanese text. I took a screenshot and in bottom right of image was translate option. However it will not work if app does not “see text” in image so my banner on shipping container with 3 inch tall Chinese characters is “unseen” by the app, so it is NOT COMPLETELY FUNCTIONAL . It is circumstantial if it will or will not work. The much touted translate language text feature does not exist in app. iOS 15.1 on 12 pro max. Does not appear in photos, or camera. Had a Chinese label on an international shipping container I needed to translate when it arrived in one of our American ports and after downloading the language, the feature still does not exist for off line or on line. It works in first example but not second one. App still has A LOT OF WORK that needs to be done, however it is off to a good start.

2 years ago, mokachi- Fei

Hard to organize

Because I have so much photos with classes, life and work, I often create lots of albums (more than 80) The issue is when I capture couple photos and want to save to the same specific albums that I created it last year or just last month would be super hard to find and time consuming. Select photos > Add to album> (???) They only have the options of creating another NEW album … Instead of giving a more conventional “search option” for saving. I don’t want to scrolling down over my 80+ albums on my phone and just to do a save. iPad can do it because of its interference with large screen. But in phone is very annoying I would like Apple can able to keep my photos more organized just to add an options by just typing in album name and do a simple save. Maybe you should add on a search bar on “albums” Also when I did the “search” at the bottom right of app & type in album name, it just cannot find anything at all… maybe the development team can utilize this “search” section better by enabling the searchable album option or able to search the word on images (that would be cool) Except to see it happens some day in future!

2 weeks ago, Avelthia

New Update is a Downgrade

The new update removes some things. For example, before in albums, if you had deep organization with nested folders, for every level there would be an ‘everything’ album, which showed all photos and videos at that level of the nest so to speak. So if there was a folder and two albums within a folder and you just wanted to see all the photos from them at once, you could just go into the ‘everything’ album. They completely removed this from albums in the iOS 18 version of Photos. Also before you could see 4 albums/folders at a time, now it’s only 3 - not as big of a deal, but still. I wish they made it like that safari redesign where we could have the option to use the old design. To be honest I like this new design but I don’t like the idea of removing features. Until they add back the features this new version is lacking I cannot bring myself to give this a higher review. This is simply an example of poor design.

2 years ago, T8AnonimousP5

Please help

Please you guys should give us an option to put a password in our app photo and in every picture or album that we wish. Is very frustrating that every time someone asks for your phone or iPad and you are very kind with them and help them… they just go to your photos and start messing with them without you even knowing. Guysss. We need privacyyyy. Pleaseeeee!!! Password ! Password! Let us have peace. Let us be fine if we forgot locking our device by knowing our privacy is not in danger. And another thing is that I would love if you enable an option to organize our pictures and albums in an amazing way. By letting us put titles inside each album and separate each section as we wish in an specific album. By letting us organize our pictures in the way we wish. So we can make one bigger, other smaller and giving us that experience. Cause the most people do is taking pictures but pictures are the messiest thing in our phone because we don’t have many options to organize it. And is very draining if we want to organize them in another app because in the journey of passing the pictures they lost the quality…

1 week ago, Bustin81

iOS 18 fail

This is the first time I’ve updated my iOS in 16 years to a degraded experience in Photos. Usually when changes are made that aren’t intuitive right away I can figure out why they did it and trust I’ll get used to it. The Photo App is worse. Takes much longer to find things, they reversed the image sort (!) for some unknown reason to be opposite of everything else you use in life (newest at top now instead of bottom. And you have to scroll right to left to “progress” backwards through photos. What?? Why??). Apple does creative things that can be hard to get used to but have practical purpose. This feels like changes just for the sake of changes and they missed. I’m assuming it’s purposely counter intuitive to make it feel new and different. And be careful scrolling, you’ll close out that “folder” accidentally when you go too far. This is annoying enough to have me open to different hardware for the first time.

3 years ago, e.slothower

GREAT app, but missing one crucial feature!

This photos app is really amazing. The updates they’ve made over the years are impressive and welcomed. However, it’s 2021 and I still can’t manually add a person to a picture! The only way for a person to be tagged in a photo (i.e. that photo will show up under that person in the ‘People’ section of the Photos app) is if the Photos app automatically recognizes their face itself. You can manually correct an incorrectly recognized person, (i.e. change a recognized face from, for example, ‘Grace’ to ‘Zoe’), but if the Photos app didn’t recognize that there was a person in the photo at all, then you’re out of luck. Please add a way so that I can manually add people to a photo! Right now you can do that on a Mac, but not on iOS/iPadOS. Please add this feature!

8 months ago, @craigacarter

Albums

Two suggestions 1) be able to create an album and then share it. Maybe I created an album and then decided I’d like to share it you cannot. You basically have to create a new shared album and then add all those photos to it. why not just let me share the first album created. 2) have some type of mark or watermark on a thumb nail image that would indicate the photo is in an album or a toggle button in “all photos” that can be activated to removed from view any photos in an album. For example I take hundreds of photos at various project and then add to my project album but I could miss adding some to the project folder. It would be nice to be able to see all photos that aren’t assigned to an album.

1 week ago, Kitty_Hime

Different, but features are still there

After updating to iOS 18, I was frustrated at first when I opened the photos app and couldn’t find all of my photos on one page like before. I messed with the app and was able to find all of my photos by searching “photos.” But this was still a little annoying. Then I accidentally discovered (thankfully) how to see all of my photos! So now I feel like I need to share, just in case it helps someone else. When you’re in the home screen of the app, just swipe down from the middle of the screen. Click the up-down arrows on the bottom left, select “Sort by Recently Added,” and it should auto-select “All.” Now when you are in your home screen of the photo app, you can see your most recents and just swipe down to view everything like before.

5 months ago, KarinGems

Terrible…

I absolutely LOVE this app but I wanted to do a slideshow for my album and I wanted to pick a song from my library like…22 by Taylor Swift or…Diamonds by Rihanna but suddenly it doesn’t let me go so PLEASE stop and fix. I terribly hate this app now although I love it, I’m did a very dumb thing to the slideshow so first I downloaded all the songs I had in my library, (especially the Demi Lovato songs) but it kept not working so yeah I hate it right now!! PLEASE STOP!!!! My brain is so full of possible killers and stupid question!!! Why are you doing this??? I thought you like it!! NOW no one wants haters, right? But IM REALLY A HATER ON THIS APP NOW!! I think we must be careful, because ITS LIKE, WE ALL KNOW THE TRUTH, BUT CAN WE JUST GET THE CHANCE TO DO OUR OWN THING??! Okay, I’m getting a bit fed right now, but…I EXPLODED THE TRUTH!! Everything is dumb, but fine! Songs just make your brain work harder!! Why are you stopping my music from good luck to the, ITS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!!!!! My dear, please stop ugh! HELP ME!!!! Oh, ugh, dumb app…

6 months ago, Kelsnev09

Memories

Overall, the app is great, but the one problem is the Memory option. Before you update your phone (in my case), you have the option to blend the photos and videos you want at what length you want and play whatever song you want. Now (after you update it to the new version (in my case)) you can’t do any of that. Your phone just picks the videos and photos and plays them at whatever length the phone wants and picks its own song. You have absolutely no control. I really HATE that. Could you put it back to the original version where you could pick and choose the photos and videos YOU want, play the music from your library that YOU want, and what lengths YOU want the video clips and whole memory to be? PLEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAASE?! I miss making my own custom movie trailers THE WAY I WANT and sending them out!

12 months ago, Starshark¥

Barely passable, much worse than previous versions

Why the h*** does it scramble my pictures when I add them to a new album?! Whenever I try to add pictures to an album, it routinely takes a dozen or more of the them from the end of my selection and inserts them randomly into the first 30 or so, as well as mixing up the vast majority of the rest. It doesn’t matter if it’s three pictures or 224 - Photos NEVER keeps them in the same order that they were in in whatever album or section that I selected them from when it adds them to the new album, even though I have Custom Sort set as the default for everything. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Or how much more time it now takes to sort and/or arrange pictures? Seriously, I’ve used Photos (and iPhoto before it) for YEARS, and this was never an issue before. So fix it. Now.

7 months ago, jojojomo9

The “person” album memories that are autogenerated are super faulty

Writing this review because I cannot find anywhere to leave app feedback for app improvement (please make this option more accessible for Apple apps and features…) but the autogenerated memories that Apple Photos creates for people who have saved/identified/made a recognized person on your phone, is super faulty. Every time I try to edit one of the memories slideshow, whether for myself or someone else, I always get an error initially. Then if I try to rearrange the pictures, remove a picture, change the key photo, the app just force quits. Or sometimes i’ll say it saved but the changes will not update ever. Literally ever. In general, there are aspects of the photo app that are just not good, not fully configured, etc. Please fix it.

7 months ago, ginger code

It’s good

There’s nothing wrong with photos really but it could be improved it’s pretty generic and simple nothing mind blowing one of the problems with it is that there’s this year-in-review that it has and it takes random photos and videos from that year and makes it into a video I think you can see the problem here just random photos and videos! I wish I could choose what photos were in the year-in- review other than that it’s fine but it’s also like as generic vanilla as a photo app can get witch I don’t think is a problem I mean how are you going to make a photo app that interesting overall the app is great

1 week ago, duncangelder

Not to just pile on, but iOS 18 completely ruined this app

Yes, I know it can be customized, but this is truly awful. Everything takes multiple taps to get around, and I don’t want all of the useless “social” things. I love using social media AND looking back through old photos but I don’t need awful wallpaper suggestions with people (no I’m not changing my Lock Screen to a photo of a random person lol), and all of the memories keep finding me random pictures of people I don’t talk to anymore. I know I can curate some of this by hiding people and asking it to show us less, but I hate that the app involves turning SO much stuff off now, and the default is a literal mess. I can’t wrap my brain around where everything is, photos are sorted in different directions based on where you are, and it’s so easy to accidentally swipe out. I hope they realize the backlash and fix this soon!

3 years ago, BobKalk

Can’t get any work done with this half baked app in the production chain.

The Photos app is always in the way when one wants to work efficiently. I bought an M1 MacBook Pro and an iPhone 13ProMax for acquiring and processing photos. I have better quality cameras, but the best one is always the one you have with you. Even while using a cable, the Photos app on the MacBook can stay on “Preparing to import” for as much as an hour with no progress indicator. It is among the most amateurish implementations I’ve seen and there’s no excuse for it. People have been expressing their frustrations and sharing work-arounds, in Apple’s own discussion forum, for years. It is a trillion dollar company that is neglectful of the most basic business essentials their customers need. Apple is very good at insulating itself from the concerns of its customer base. Hopefully this review will be seen by someone that can make a difference if it’s not deleted first.

2 years ago, melll99

iCloud

There has to be an option where it lets me back up photos manually because although it’s great to have them backed up, whenever I want to post, share, etc, I have to wait because it needs wifi and it almost beats the purpose of it all because it takes so long and this gets annoying. It has stopped me from sharing photos, posting photos, doing anything with my photos all because I have to wait for them to download from icloud and not even moment later they back up too fast. Again it’s a good thing, but sometimes you gotta let me take control because there’s some photos and videos I want to share or post on the go and the download waiting time is so long and just kills the whole mood and timing. Please fix this. Let me manually back up a single photo/video(s). If I don’t find myself need for them soon, I will put then back up with iCloud.

3 years ago, BlackMisfit

People and Filename

I have been using the Photos app since my first Apple 3GS. Now using a Apple 12 with iOS 15 but there are two huge problems: 1) There is no possible way to add a person manually to the People section. If the iPhone does not detect the same face in multiple photos automatically, your screwed. I was lucky enough that my iPhone only detected at least one person. So I have 3 out of the 4 different people slots empty. 🤔 2) Apple has improved the ability to adjust date and time on a photo. But 15 software updates later and I still can’t custom rename a photo filename. Instead I am stuck with the automatic name the Photo app gives it “IMG_0500”. I guess my memory could remember the name of 500 different pictures in the past 14 years. 🤔 I don’t want to wait another 15 years to be able to add people or rename a photo. Can we please fix these problems?

1 week ago, gjjdhdjfjdj

Worst update

Why did Apple and their infinite wisdom decide to change the layout? I was in the middle of backing up my photos, where in the past if you wanted to Seperate shared photos from stored photos it was easy, but now it’s next to impossible to find the settings. Secondly, the layout is horrendous. I don’t want to be bombarded with recent photos when I open the app, the option to would’ve been nice, which is the point of having a app stay open in the background, to keep your last task. Because I used to use photos to look for pinned/favorited photos such as documents and schedules it was easy with albums being the main page, but now you must scroll down, with the text so small you miss it basically every time. It came from an easy to use simple app, to one of the most frustrating apps that I am forced to use day to day.

4 months ago, AngelC@k3s

Is there a way to transfer library

I have a Google photos account with all my photos and video. Would like to transfer my complete library in one clean sweep over to iCloud. I fine that is very annoying that this is not possible. The only couple of ways to transfer your library is to select every photo and video you which Google caps you at 500(crashes during download to the device) or use Google takeout and download it to you Mac then upload them to iCloud. As a person who doesn’t have Mac/MacBook and has search for a solution and haven’t found a convenient one for me, it’s again annoying. If there’s is a solution that I’m not aware of please forward the information. I have a few people that I know who only use Google cloud because they can conveniently transfer libraries.

3 years ago, Coastercobra

Mediocre

First let me say that there are things I do enjoy about this app. It’s ability to search and memories feature as well as the map function are wonderful. What isn’t is it’s organization. The phones main camera roll should absolutely not be the recents folder as every single thing gets grouped in there for some reason. I checked a few older iPhones and none of them seem to have this problem, so in a few ways the app has actually gotten worse overtime. I think what bothers me the most is that it’s not just photos from the camera roll that get organized this way; It’s everything from everywhere. They all end up in this folder and even if I move photos manually they stay in the recents folder and clutter everything to the point where I’m force to search for things.

2 weeks ago, jkfodos

iOS 18 update is the worst one yet

The new iOS 18 is awful. It completely takes away to simplicity of the previous version. Not only is the one massive scrolling tab awful but nothing is remotely even in a similar place. Having albums all the way at the bottom is frustrating to scroll to and makes no sense. Additionally when you click on a photo from your gallery it doesn’t even go full screen which is so aggravating. I click on a photo to see it not to do whatever else with it. Another thing in the long list of problems is there is no accessibility in getting out of albums once your in then. I honestly don’t even know how to do that because whatever the method is is so different than all the previous versions and uses of Apple apps. I hate it so much and so does everyone else. Change it back.

2 months ago, Brstie

Overexposure in Screenshots

When you take a video on an iPhone and go to screenshot the video it completely ruins the quality, giving you an overexposed picture that you are unable to fix through editing. Seeing how most of these phones are $800+ it is unacceptable to not be able to perform simple tasks like this. When taking regular photos it also tends to add a grey, grainy filter over photos. This can be fixed by adjusting the Live Photo, but then you lose the quality. I have always had an iPhone but these issues make me consider switching to another phone brand. Being able to take decent photos with a phone that has not 1, but 2 cameras on it is the bare minimum. I hope this is either fixed in new updates, or with the next phone. Show that you care about your consumers, give us better camera quality.

1 year ago, Charmed59

Sorting into Albums

There’s a reason why I like to sort my photos into albums, and that is so they don’t appear in the Main Library where I have to constantly scroll through them and see them again and again. The Library is too large and I forget which have been sorted. I’ve never experienced such a thing, whether it’s placing items in folders on my PC or using Google Drive. It doesn’t make sense to keep them in the main library when I’m trying to be organized. So the Albums are more like a simple tag than an actual sorting tool. The Album should work as a Move function when I place a photo in it. At first I thought I was actually Duplicating my photos by placing into Albums, which is as silly as not moving them from the Library. It’s so frustrating!

2 years ago, Sweetheart20|02

Unable to Load Videos and Photos 😢

The only reason I gave this a 5 star rating was so it would appear first. It really deserves 1 star. I’ve taken lots of pictures and videos of my kids, parents, siblings, friends, etc. I have so many precious memories on it! And when you tried to look back on it, it has a little explanation mark in the right corner, and it says “Unable to Load Video/Photo” and I can’t watch it/see it clearly! I have enough storage, shut off/powered off my phone many times. I have all the updates, enough storage, etc. I AM SO SAD 😭!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE FIX THIS ASAP!!! I’m heartbroken! Seriously, guys.

1 year ago, AJDude13

Disappointingly Outdated UI

FOR INSTANCE— After you click “Add to Album” there should be a search bar at the top of the screen where you can search your folders. Under the current system, we have to scroll all the way through your folders to find the right one to add a picture to. This is HORRIBLY slow and makes it not worth my time to organize my photos. No organized photos means it’s way harder to quickly find memories I appreciate and value. SOLUTION: either put a search bar at the top of “Add to Album” screens or better yet, allow us to put an image into MULTIPLE folders. Devs, it’s not hard to make app good! Go steal good UI from the Day One journal App and get inspiration from their ridiculously intuitive tag feature. They do things way better than you guys ever have.

4 months ago, Kat71353

Has great potential

I love and appreciate all the work you have put into developing this app! But! I can’t find a way to mark a picture so that I know it is already in a folder! If the customer can’t know at a glance which photo has already been placed in a folder and which photo isn’t, it negates the rest of the positive tools available. PLEASE let me know if I missed something that would let me know which photo (s) I need to place in a folder vs those already in a folder. Going to folders to see if the picture is there, is a waste of time. There are many times that one cannot place a photo into a folder immediately after it has been taken. Thank you. I look forward to hearing back from you.

1 week ago, Mushroomworm

iOS 18 Edition

The new update that came along with iOS 18 has completely butchered the app. What used to be a straightforward, user friendly, and clean looking interface, has been replaced by a cluttered UI as Apple has forced everything onto one page! Instead of having the 4 tabs: “Library”, “Albums”, “For You”, and “Search” that were simple to use and direct, you now have to scroll around on the one page till you find what you’re looking for. And it’s not obvious where things are now located due to them being buried within the ridiculous amount of submenus that have been created to fit this one page layout. It’s horrific to navigate and is genuinely a step backwards from what we used to have. Please revert this change or at least give the option to change back to the old layout.

8 months ago, Kaybee8888

Has potential, missing important features

I keep hoping I won’t have to perpetually scroll to find a photo I’m looking for but 10+ years later, still not possible. The recent upgrades beautiful display, curation of photo memories, faces, places, dates are great but…. true organization is just not possible on mobile. This is critical as photo taking has exponentially increased since the advent of mobile. Main issues: Keywords cannot be added to photos on mobile making organization limited to desktop Smart albums not accessible on mobile requiring a return to the desktop Please fix! Terribly inconvenient to keep returning to desktop to make these edits and use the associated organization tools.

3 years ago, Xrmek

Decent for what it is, but leaving a lot out

This is a decent app considering it is built into the OS, but a few things limit it greatly, in my opinion. First is that iCloud storage is still limited to only 2TB. This is plenty for most people, but it’s absurd that this is the maximum that is available in the year 2021. Anyone with a robust library will soon come up against the limit and have to make uncomfortable and inconvenient compromises in order to keep using the app. The opposite of Apple’s “it just works” philosophy. This will become an issue for more people as the size of video that the iPhone 13 Pro can produce will gobble up space quickly. Secondly, this app could do with a more robust suite of editing tools. Adding the functionality of Snapseed directly into the app would be a welcome improvement.

9 months ago, omgtink121

Best organization I’ve ever had!

I have always loved photos on Apple. I love how I can tell my phone who is in the photo and it just knows for the future. Especially. The ever changing faces of kids. Search is amazing and accurate. Once I even was able to look up pumpkin and found 240 photos. {Fall wedding} Now I was trying to shake my phone to report a suggestion. In shared albums we need to be able to make albums with in. I use them a lot and now they are getting +500 photos in multiple shared albums. I want to organize them better. ****Send help in update!! **** maybe on Mac I’ll be ok.

1 year ago, 0611!

I cloud

So The app Photos is a very great app but there is a problem and I know that this probably happened to White but it’s kind ofWent to far so my iCloud it always gets full and I am right now I have like 25 photos on my phone right now and I deleted all my photos it all of my good photos that I sacrificed and my iCloud is still full and it’s super annoying and I don’t know if it’s your guises fault but all I know is that I just counted and I have 25 photos on my Messages right now and my iCloud is still full like for photos and I’m doing it apps I’ve deleted everything I’ve backed up my phone and like I don’t know like I don’t know what to do anymore it’s absolutely ridiculous I don’t know if it’s your fault but

1 year ago, CollinVeldman

ICloud photo sync is unreliable and never works

I try to use my phone to take pictures for my job. Every single time, iCloud photo sync just gets stuck on "syncing x items to iCloud." Right now I'm looking at "syncing 2 items to iCloud" that's been stuck there for 30 minutes. It will be syncing fine and decide to get stuck at a seemingly random number of pictures left. The only reliable fix I've found is either wait 4 hours for it to finally decide to sync my remaining 2 pictures or pause the sync and restart my phone. Then it works like it should until the next time I take some pictures. FIX YOUR ICLOUD PHOTO SYNC PLEASE!

2 years ago, Review7385

Please Update

Google Photos is simply just better than this app on so many levels. I’d like to move away from Google and go all Apple, but a lot of little features or quality of life items are just not here. Please take another look at this app and consider some updates. One of the biggest frustrations is selecting new photos to add to an existing album and it won’t show what is already selected while in the selection screen so I don’t know if it is or is not in the album having to keep deselecting things to make sure I didn’t miss anything or go manually inspect and compare album to recents. I’m getting old and my mind is not as sharp anymore and this app just makes it harder while also reminding me of my declining mental agility on the regular.

3 years ago, Ravin' mad

Apple knows best

The good. It includes similar - & sometimes better - editing tools than iPhoto. However, they are much less friendly to use than iPhoto. The bad. Unlike iPhoto where you can name the event of a day’s photos, Photos names it for you according to geographic location. So a hike along Piedra Lisa Trail becomes Cibola National Forest even though only part of the hike was in Cibola, and even though that could include disparate areas in NM. I could not possibly know where I was for the photos, so Apple tells me. Other “events” like the International Balloon Fiesta are labeled “Albuquerque.” Wonderful. Apple solution is to make me create an album for every event. Recommend: Let your paying customer name events as in iPhoto. Put the customer first for a change. Yes, I know that is a lot to ask.

Description

Browse, edit, and share your picture-perfect moments. Photos is the home for all of your amazing photos and videos, and it's smart and personal, with intelligent features that help you find, enjoy, and share your best shots. Browse and organize your library • In the Library tab, the All Photos view displays your photos and videos in an interactive zoomable grid, and Days, Months and Years views curate your best moments, removing clutter and bringing your library to life with animated video playback • The Albums tab lets you organize your photos just how you want • People and Places albums let you browse your photos by who's in them and where they were taken • Media Types automatically organize your photos into helpful albums like Videos, Portrait mode, Screenshots, and more • The duplicates album helps you clean up your library by merging duplicate photos Relive your memories and more in For You • The For You tab contains Memories, Shared Album activity, Sharing Suggestions, and the best moments from your library in Featured Photos • Memories uses on-device intelligence to find trips, holidays, people, pets, and more in your collection, and presents them as movies paced to music, including intelligent song suggestions from Apple Music for Apple Music subscribers Find just what you're looking for with powerful Search • On-device machine learning analyzes your photos so you can search for people, places, dates, events, and even objects and scenes like basketball, birthday cake, or beach • Intelligent search suggestions surface important events, people, places, and dates even before you type in the search bar Perfect your photos using sophisticated yet easy-to-use tools in Edit • Fine‑tune your photos and videos with powerful tools like auto enhance, highlights, shadows, vibrance, and definition, and apply edits to another image or to a batch • Nearly every tool and effect available for photos can also be used on videos, including rotate, crop, and auto enhance • Adjust keyframes in Live Photos and add fun effects Share with friends and family • Share to Messages, Mail, and third party apps right from Photos • Share photos seamlessly with up to five other family members with iCloud Shared Photo Library • Use Shared Albums to share photos and videos with just the people you choose • iCloud Links let you send a set of photos and videos with a link that can be viewed on any platform, in any browser Keep your library safe and up to date with iCloud Photos • Store your photos and videos safely in iCloud and access them from any device, any time, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac, on iCloud.com, or even on a PC • Your library stays up to date across all your devices Keep your photos private • Photos protects your privacy by using on-device intelligence to analyze your photos and videos • Face recognition, scene detection, object detection and more are all done completely on your device • The Hidden and Recently Deleted albums are locked by default and can be unlocked using your device’s authentication method Use the Photos app on Apple Watch to access your favorite photos right on your wrist • View and manage your Memories, Featured Photos, or an album you've synced to your Apple Watch • Relive your favorite moments with highlights from Memories • Watch your Live Photo come to life right from your wrist • Create a Photos or Portraits watch face • Share a photo from your library with someone from your contacts