Photo “Albums” disappeared after updating to IOS 18

allecia128 wrote:

FIX IT APPLE, I am furious! Most users have multiple devices, meaning we are loyal to the brand for a reason….this is not it. I made careful curated albums over the years. Now they are all gone and no solid answers on how to get them back… FIX IT!

Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Meanwhile, if there is an Apple Store near you, I suggest you make an appointment to have someone there show you how to use Photos. It's the sort of thing that's probably easier to do in person. Almost everyone I've interacted with who thought their albums are gone has discovered they weren't.

I had the same problem Contacted apple support and they couldn’t find them either but I also have the google photos app on my iPad and I found all my photos on there It was a pain but I made new albums to put the photos in and now they’re all there on the google app

Tali22, scroll through the comments. On page 2 or 3 Naptown explains what to do. One of his posts includes a video link showing you what to do and how to organize better

margo m. wrote: "Where is a response from Apple??"

margo m ~ Not in these user-to-user communities. You can get a response from Apple here:

Contact Apple for support and service

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Same here. My pregnancy /birth/baby albums, wedding album all gone. Two hours on phone with Apple and they are nowhere to be found. Said I can try a third party date recovery company they can recommend but would charge fee. I was like “I’m not paying a cent when it’s your update that caused the loss of my albums”. I’m waiting to hear back from them now. I’m pretty sure I will never get them back. I’m devastated. All I can do now is go back through Facebook and save the photos from each event again and I’m going to check through external drives we have at home praying I backed them up at some point 😢 I feel your pain

Pominoz1974 wrote:

Same. I have albums missing, nowhere to be found and no, the pictures aren’t all back in my library. I’m devastated. Pregnancy, baby, wedding albums all gone

The fastest thing to do is probably jus reload them from your backup.

oana135 wrote: "Yes the albums are there but mine most of them are empty . My pictures from the albums disappeared 😡😡😡I have been using iPhone for years . My next phone will be android . I am so p… off"

oana ~ We're all just users here, so:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

Contact Apple for support and service

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The albums are not gone, but for my big library it took days for all to rearrange. In addition album search on random occations show the wrong search results, and as such renders itself useless. Searching for a specific name on one day shows all albums starting with that name, on other days the search results for same name only shows ⅓ of those.

Uchel wrote:

I want to go back to the old app. This is the worst upgrade. I can’t seem to locate my albums! How do I go back?

It is not possible to go back. However, there is a lot of information in this thread explaining how to use the new Photos app.

Start by going to the top of the page. Just under the lower left of the original post, you'll see "Sort by" and a drop-down menu. Select "Oldest" from the drop-down menu. Then, go to the first page of the thread and start reading.

Candwrliz wrote:

I definitely have lost all my folders and the photos that were in them! They are not in the Recently Deleted section nor do they appear if I swipe right on Albums or if I swipe to the bottom. Does anyone have any other ideas, please?

What is in folders or albums is only a link to the photo in the Photo library. So, even if you can't find the folders or albums, the photos should still be there.

Hyerdon wrote: "Just supporting traction on this comment in hope Apple will fix this..."

Hyerdon ~ Apple isn't in these user-to-user communities looking at thousands of daily posts for "supporting traction". Instead, Apple will "read all feedback carefully" here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

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Yes My Albums were there but there was 0 photos in them I have contacted Apple Support Altogether over 2 hours on the phone and they couldn’t find them and then they cut me off That was after spending over 1 hour in the shop before that I have an Android phone and have Google photos App on my iPad which is synced with my Apple photos and guess what! I found all the photos still in my google photos app and have now had to put the in Albums in my Google app

Hope this helps somebody

Yes, a terrible update. But, if you remembrer the name of your folder, you can search for it.

See the answers from Naptown58. It’ll show you how to customize your folders/albums. They are not gone, just moved to another area within Photos under iOS 18.

After spending hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks organizing over 100k pictures in my library into albums the upgrade has unilaterally destroyed my work by eliminating my albums. Talk about ill conceived. You can promptly restore them. I have been a longtime Mac user but I am regretting the every penny of the many thousands of dollars wasted on hardware and software from apple. I genuinely hate every single person responsible for this disaster. Fix it now.