Finding photos not in albums on an iphone

I’m still waiting for an official way to do this and came across this post. For now I’m using a great little iPhone app called HashPhotos by beyondf. It works with the native Apple Photos library and has smart albums. Just add a filter !#inalbum and it’ll show all photos not in an album. Its thumbnail settings are also handy for other views as it’ll allows you to overlay album names in the thumbnail view, so you can easily see which albums the photos are in.

This may take a little bit, but I put my photos in albums and then select all of the photos in each album and hide them. This hides them from your "Recents" album and allows you to see which photos are not categorized. Then, once you are done, you can go to your "Hidden Photos" album and unhide them all. The photos will all then show back up in the albums that they were in.

There are still no smart albums on an iPhone. And the Filters do not support the albums as well.

To be able to see which photos are in albums you would have to mark the photos you added to albums. I am only adding favourites to albums, as I do not want to clutter the albums up with mediocre photos. Albums are getting useless, when they are holding too many photos and need scrolling. The favorites are easily recognised by the heart ♡ badge overlay.

Another way to see which photos you have organized would be to use the Shared iCloud Photos Library to split your library into a personal library (with the photos that need organising) and a Shared library for the photos you are done with. Move all photos from your albums into the Shared iCloud Photos Library. See: How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library – Apple Support (UK)

Then you can toggle between your unorganized mess and the organized photos by switching between your personal library and the Shared iCloud Photos Library. This will work, if all your devices are supporting the Shared iCloud Photos Library. I am not sharing my iCloud Photos Library with others, just with myself between my two Apple IDs and enjoy to have two different libraries in iCloud this way. This will not work, if you invite others to share your library. But if you are the only user, it is great, as we can have two different libraries in iCloud and switch between them.

I turned this into a user Tip: Using the Shared iCloud Photos Library to have two separate libraries on all devices… - Apple Community

The Shared iCloud Photos Library is just perfect to save the photos we have finished to work with, so we can remove them from our personal library but keep them in the albums.

It looks great, but it is not free and requires a subscription or a life time purchase.