Where did the Camera Roll go in iOS 18

Your library is the camera roll. What was called "Camera Roll" was changed to "Recents" in a past iOS update (forget which one) and has now dropped that name and is just your Library.

Any picture you take will be in your library, and as such that is your camera roll.

I don't believe there has ever been a separate Camera Roll to the general library. It was just called "Camera Roll" but contained the same things Library does now.

weber88 wrote:

This is not true. The camera roll shows photo taken on the iPhone.

No, that is NOT true unless the screen is locked. It then shows only photos taken since the screen was last locked. The Camera Roll has always shown all photos in the Photos app, regardless of where they came from. And it hasn’t been called Camera Roll for a couple of years. It was renamed to Library.

Antonia5314 wrote:

No it's not. The camera roll was literally everything you took with the camera and screen shot that had not been moved off the device. No it's "library" which is EVERYTHING, including pictures you moved off the device, added to a folder and added back to the phone. Camera roll and library are two completely different things.

What part do you not understand about the fact that iPhone Photos HAS NOT HAD A CAMERA ROLL SINCE IOS 13, 5 YEARS AGO?

What had been the camera roll because an album called “Recents” as of iOS 14, and continues in iOS 15, iOS 16, iOS 17, and iOS 18.

Solution found to the missing "Recents" folder but it cost me $16. I found an app called HashPhotos in the App Store that is a photo viewer that gives me back my "Recents" view from iOS17. I can easily view and delete picture/videos stored on my iPhone that I (1) took using the iPhone camera, (2) saved to photos from emails or texts or (3) screenshots. Never thought I would have to turn to a 3rd party app to give me back baked-in iPhone functionality that was there since day 1.

I also noticed that new photos I take no longer show up in Windows File Explorer when I connect my iPhone to my PC. I see all the iOS 17 pictures taken organized in monthly folders but no new pictures taken since the iOS18 update are there. That is how I get my photos off the iPhone and onto my computer where I keep my master repository of photos, edit videos, etc.

[Edited by Moderator]

Using Windows File Explorer has never been an approved way to view or copy photos from an iPhone, and using it can corrupt the Photos database. The database has been reorganized with each iOS version, as other posters have mentioned. And it also doesn’t merge photo files with sidecar files that contain editing data (.aae files). I’m happy to see that Apple has finally taken steps to block this way of seeing inside iOS. Here are the supported ways of copying photos→Copying personal photos and videos from iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your computer

Lawrence - before iOS18 there was a thing in Photos called Recents that I could hit and see only the pictures that I had taken with my iPhone. None of the other pictures, synched from my Mac, could be seen - they were in a different set of folders called "From My Mac". Some users, including me, clearly found this very useful.

This folder called Recents is no longer there. There is a folder called "Recent Days" which has every photo on my phone inclucing those synched with my Mac - which is not useful for me. The Library also includes every picture on my phone. There is now no way to easily isolate the pictures taken on my iPhone from all my other pictures and this is a bit of a pain for me and the way I use my iPhone photos. The camera roll in the Camera app replicates this with the important exception that the thumbnails are only visible as a single row, not a grid, which makes it much less useable for people like me who use iPhone and Photos the way we do.

Apple has removed/changed the Recents functionality and that's why users are complaining. The fact that you don't understand why this is a pain probably means that your use-case for the iPhone and the Photos is different from mine and other users. It doesn't mean that users who are pointing out that a major part of the Photos app functionality has been taken away are wrong and should be scolded for complaining about it.

Tony in Ottawa wrote:

The Camera App shows all the photos in the camera roll but only in tiny little thumbnails. Would be better if the thumbnails were bigger and also available in the Photos App.

You can pinch to zoom in and out to change the thumbnail size.

click here ➜ View photos and videos on iPhone - Apple Support

wynford wrote:

If you know someone with an iPhone with iOS 17.6 or older, open their Photos app and you'll see Camera Roll right at the very top, separate from the Library and right above From My Mac

No. Its been a few iOS versions now, were its called just "Recents". Unless in a different language or locale it's referred to as Camera Roll. In Us English it has been called "Recents" for a while and has always since the days of being named "Camera Roll" included all photos in the library.

My iPhone 11 Pro, with iOS 17.6 shows "Recents" not "Camera Roll"

weber88 wrote:

I have a correction to make. The album is called "Recent" in IOS 17. It use to be called camera roll in the past.

Correct. That's what we have been saying for the last 2 pages.

Camera Roll was changed to Recents several years back, and now it's just Library. Which means Camera Roll went nowhere with iOS 18.

Not sure what's heated about the conversation we've been having though.

Scubachick75 wrote:

Completely agree, it’s awful. I need to be able to see my camera roll I use it for all sorts of stuff like screenshots and photos that I don’t necessarily need to keep. I sort through it monthly delete the crap then sync my photos I want to keep on my Mac to folders.

Easy. In the Photo app chose to view photos by month. All of the phones for each month will be grouped together.

Or look in the Recents album.

And NO iPhone has had a camera roll for 5 years, since iOS 13, so I don’t get why suddenly this is a problem.

tom_993 wrote:

Using MS Photos appears to be the solution for me. I've always used Windows Explorer to download photos, but MS Photos seems to work better, plus it's what Apple recommends and supports.

When I open MS Photos with my phone connected, it shows what is on my camera roll. I can bulk select and download them to my PC from here. They are all in one place, which is nice, as Explorer seemed to have some strangely named folders and I had to open all of them. It also seems I can bulk select and delete from MS Photos. I was always careful not to do that with Explorer, as it can corrupt the photos database.

Give this a try if you're on a PC. It's possible that the instructions in that link for Mac's will do something similar.

Thanks, Tom. The equivalent app for Mac is Apple Image Capture.

I found the elusive "Recents" or "Recently Added" folder that I used before the update. Hard to find, but it's there. I don't see "Camera Roll", but I haven't see that in a long time. In the Recently Added I find it has everything I kept in it before and any new photo (even if saved from a text) and screenshots go to the folder just like Library. Now if Apple would let me make it the default folder and hide "Library" I'd be back to where I was before. Look at my post, location highlighted.