While Apple decided to revamp the look of the Photos app in iOS 18 to help you locate your photos and videos, I ended up feeling like it simply made it worse. I will explain how to bring some order into things and partially return to the state before iOS 18.
Hide and Reorder Collections
As expected, with iOS 18, the Photos app has abandoned the tabbed design interface recognized earlier. It is now a singular interface where you have all your photos, videos, and even collections – in other words, all but the main photo strip. We have Recent Days, People, Memories, and Featured Photos. Luckily, when it comes to iTunes, Apple has made it possible to hide collections that one does not wish to view. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Go to Launch Photos, scroll down, and tap on Customize & Reorder.
2. To exclude certain categories from the library, uncheck all the categories you do not wish to be shown.
3. Last of all, click the X button on the top right corner.
It is also available on the same page if you wish to return to the default layout. Tap Reset. Selecting options for a familiar design before iOS 18, use the following configurations: Select all buttons but Shared Albums, People & Places, Media Types, and Utilities.
But if you prefer to just make the EWS books that are frequently used to float to the top of the list while ‘burying’ the rest at the bottom instead of removing them from the list altogether, you can do so on the same Customize & Reorder page. All you have to do is press and hold the three horizontal lines next to a collection and then drag it to reorganize the lists in whatever order desired.
Take Advantage of Pinned Collections
By the time I reach 200 photos in an hour’s photoshoot, I’m also very much used to picking images I want to post to my social media by selecting the heart icon at the bottom of the screen that sends them to the Favorites folder.
The first time I noticed this on iOS 18, I looked for the Favorites album in the Photos app and couldn’t find it; however, it is under Pinned Collections.
Pinned Collections is another way that Photos app users can customize the app to their preference. This page shows you can select which collections appear here and reorganize them to reduce the gallery clutter. Before you do this, ensure you haven’t lost Pinned Collections by following the steps below in the next section.
1. After that, scroll down to look for Pinned Collections below the line of your photo library. Then, tap Modify next to it.
2. Otherwise, tap the minus (-) icon beside a pinned collection you wish to delete and tap Delete.
3. To add a pinned collection, tap the plus (+) sign next to a pinned collection under the Suggestions header. You can also add a collection or an album of your desire.
You can also sort pinned collections by going to the three lines at the top right and dragging them up into whatever position you choose.
Sort by Recently Added
Perhaps the most irritating of those is that in iOS 18, the default choice for saving images is by the date and time they were captured. Earlier, it used to sync photos in your library depending on when you saved iCloud in Photos.
Now, organically, whether you transfer photos from another iPhone by using AirDrop, save images from Messages, or other social network applications, they will be arranged according to the time that they dropped according to the original timestamp instead of piling up all the pictures at the end as it used to. This can be particularly irritating if you often use the save image feature, as they appear with other images you have saved before, so you lose track of them.
To correct this, begin scrolling in your library and click the sorting icon when it is shown. Next, choose Sort by option from the drop-down list and then select Recently Added.
Images and videos you transfer to your device, create, or receive using AirDrop will be at the bottom of the library.
