Did Apple change the directory structure for their photos?

I did do a search and could find nothing about this. Did Apple change the directory structure for their photos. When I look at my iPhone DCIM folder in Windows Explorer the subdirectories are of the form 2021_5 (i.e. Year_Month). It used to be something like 101 102 103 plus some other identifiers. This seems to have happened with the iOS 14.6 update. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer it, but I just want to be sure it is an Apple change, not something wonky with my setup.

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Posted on Jun 5, 2021 10:21 PM

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Lawrence Finch

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Posted on Aug 2, 2021 6:49 AM

lancewhit wrote:

Yep, I noticed this. With iOS 14.6, Apple changed the photo folder structure to names based on the date. I liked that change since it made it easier to identify which folders contained which photos. But I understand it may have caused hiccups for some people. But then with iOS 14.7, the folder structure went back to the older name format. I don't know what Apple is doing here. I don't think they know what they're doing either.

Apple knows exactly what they are doing. You are using an unsupported way to copy photos from your iPhone to Windows. Apple stores photos in a way to optimize management of the photos database in your phone; they do not expect you to (or want you to) access your photos in this unapproved way. They experimented with a different internal structure, apparently found that it didn’t work as well as the previous structure, and went back to the previous structure.

This link covers all of the supported ways to copy photos→Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

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Did Apple change the directory structure for their photos?

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