I do NOT like what Apple did to the Photos in iOS 18... I can not find the Camera Roll. Closest is Recent Days, but it does not show all the pictures that were on the Camera Roll. I have to use a third party app on my PC to see the photos. I think Apple screwed up somewhere. Come on Apple, put Camera Roll back the way it used to be and the way it should be.
iPhone SE, iOS 18
Open the Camera app and in the bottom left corner is a small picture beside the click button, tap on that small picture, once opened, it doesn't say Camera Roll, which would be helpful if it did, and all the Camera Roll pictures are there and if you tap the All Photos at the top, your entire library would show.
It'll take time to get used to it after all the years the Camera Roll was in Photos.
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.
railroadme wrote:
it’s not the same for us that move pictures off and sync them back!
It's seems fairly obvious, watching what Apple has done with many things, that they are trying very hard to push people toward using iCloud for syncing. I'm making no judgment on which way is best, nor do I especially care why anyone makes the choice they do. But, I think that it is nonetheless true.
It doesn't much matter whether or not anyone here agrees with your or even understands. You should let Apple know how you feel:
wynford wrote:
tom_993 wrote:
delete from MS Photos. I was always careful not to do that with Explorer, as it can corrupt the photos database.
How and why does Explorer corrupt the photos database?
You should probably study the developer documentation for iOS. Basically, iOS has moved beyond files. All native data for Apple’s apps and also 3rd party apps reside in SQLite databases, not files, the photo database included. Photo “files” are actually the leaf nodes of the photo database tree, and one image can have one or more related leaves including metadata for the image, and also editing and image optimizing data. It will also have links to all of the places the photo appears, such as albums. If you just copy the jpg or heic file you lose all that metadata, and if you delete it you break the database tree structure.
The old 'recents' folder can still be found in the new Photos app. Open Photos, scroll down to 'pinned collections', then select 'recently saved'. This gives same photos / videos that used to be in the old style recents folder.
(If Pinned Collections is not showing, scroll all the way to the bottom and add it via 'Customise & Reorder')
(If 'recently saved' is not showing in the 'pinned collections', then select 'modify' and add it in)
raving_dave wrote:
The old 'recents' folder can still be found in the new Photos app. Open Photos, scroll down to 'pinned collections', then select 'recently saved'. This gives same photos / videos that used to be in the old style recents folder.
(If Pinned Collections is not showing, scroll all the way to the bottom and add it via 'Customise & Reorder')
(If 'recently saved' is not showing in the 'pinned collections', then select 'modify' and add it in)
I took some photos yesterday and doing it your way, all do not show up, if I tap the thumbnail in the Camera app, they are all there. The Photos app is badly screwed up.
Library is NOT equivalent to the previous camera roll. Library contains EVERYTHING now, including synced albums/photos. Whereas the previous Roll/Recents did not. The Library has become unwieldy with 100,000 synced photos.
wynford wrote: ... If I want to send someone a photo from a week ago (the missing ones) I can't as I can't find it.
I typed in sept 10 2024 to Search and got pictures from a week ago. What exactly happens when you do that?
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.
wynford wrote:
My apologizes to everyone who said Recents... I restored my iPhone 8 and everybody who said Camera Roll was changed to Recents was correct and I was wrong (not intensionally)... I don't know where I got Camera Roll from!!!
It can be hard to keep up with Apple's terminology. Or keep it straight. Don't even get me started on Apple TV.
Let me correct: The photos view in the camera app is on the lower left side.
Let me clarify: The "camera roll" view I get when I look at the photos view from the Camera app displays all photos/videos stored physically on my iPhone that originally came from (1) taken by the camera, (2) saved from messages (3) saved from email attachments and finally (4) screen captures I chose to save to "Photos". It does NOT show pictures/video I synced from my Mac/PC. I do not upload my photos to Apple for any reason if I can help it. Using the Camera app to view pictures physically on my phone is a stop-gap measure. I need to see them isolated from synced Mac/PC photos in my Photos application please.
I found this and it seems very good... in Photos you can see Camera Roll and Screenshots and Wallpaper and your entire Library... you can download photos to your PC as well as upload to your iPhone and lots more... and there's a free giveaway... it's called Winx MediaTrans for PC and there's a Mac version as well
This won't help many people but it lets me re-create the Camera Roll/Recents/or whatever it was called.
TLDR: If your use-case matches mine (below) then the quickest way to get at the pics that used to be in Camera Roll/Recents/Whatever is to search for "iPhone" in Photos and this will find only photos taken on an iPhone because the camera name goes in the meta-data of the images. I appreciate that this won't help most people here cos my use-case is a bit odd.
My use-case is that I only use the iPhone camera for snapshots/convenience. Say a product label if I want to buy something or an amplifier wiring before I take it apart or a quick scan of a document that I might need or a baking disaster to share with mates in the pub. Just temp stuff that I might or might not need to keep but can't be bothered to delete. These don't get synched to my Mac or to the cloud or anywhere - they reside only on the phone and should I want to keep them then I import them to the Mac, delete them from the iPhone and add them to the set of folders that get synched to the iPhone from my Mac . Then, I have a number of cameras that I use to take photos I want to keep that will go in my database and these synch between Mac and iPhone via Finder and USB. I also have a bunch of scanned photos going back to the 1960s which are also synched between Mac and iPhone via Finder and USB. These pics are all tagged with the camera or scanner model so they don't show up in the "iPhone" search.
I don't think it matters, but note also that I don't use Photos on Mac. I use a semi-pro image management programme that better meets my needs. When I do import pics taken on an iPhone I can easily change the camera from iPhone to something else so that it doesn't appear in the "iPhone" search described above.
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.
Last Saturday I took about 8 pictures, only 2 showed in "Photos"
I had to search online in this support thread to see that pictures that fail to show in correct place are able to be seen once I open the camera, and then tap on the lower left corner photo thumbnail, then poof magically all the pics that should be in "Photos" are all right there, present in the Camera app, thumbnail view, and I can scroll horizontally to see them. Apple took the liberty to take away "camera roll" just rename it back to that. It benefited nobody to change the name. and if I am wrong then why are so many people looking online for help? Anyway.... Apple will eventually change this around... again. I am happy to see I am not the only one dealing with this. TLDR - Look in Camera app for any pics not showing in "Photos" Apple, admit it, you goofed on this one.
9786 wrote:
Apple please allow clarity to prevail again - as before.
Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:
Where did the Camera Roll go in iOS 18
