“Recently deleted” photos file is missing.

Recently Deleted is with Utilities at the bottom of the main window:

The Recently Deleted view only appears when there are recently deleted pictures that can be recovered--pictures that have not been permanently deleted or that have been there for 30 days.

Have you tapped the ">" disclosure triangle to the right of "Utilities"? By default only the first four items in this list will be shown. To reveal all entries, tap the ">" sign.

Your missing photos may be in a "Recovered" album instead of in Recently Deleted, if the Photos Library has become damaged due to frequent crashes. See the paragraph "Find recovered items on this manual page: Find receipts, QR codes, recently edited photos, and more on iPhone - Apple Support"

But could you tell us, if you are using iCloud Photos and if there is a problem with lack of Cloud Storage? If so, all bets are off and the lack of Cloud Storage need fixing, before Photos can work again properly, see Mark's post.

To be sure the we are talking about the same thing: I go to an album or the library view and I pick a picture:

It opens, and I tap the trashcan:

and I get the warning I showed before:

If I hit Delete Photo, then the picture is removed from my Library and can be seen for 30 Days in the Recently Deleted View. The Recently Deleted View appears at the bottom of the the main window

above the choice to "Customize & Reorder."

In "Customize & Reorder," by the way, I can choose to change the order of the sections or eliminate them from the list.

Here, I've removed Utilities, so that no longer appears below "Media Types," or anywhere in the main window.

So, again, exactly how do you delete a picture from Photos? What would you do differently? Perhaps you could include screenshots so that I can see what's different…

One possibility: If you have iCloud Photos active on this phone AND your iCloud storage is full, then Photos will apparently delete items immediately instead of keeping them in Recently Deleted.

The solution. Click and open the Customize & Reorder button. That opens this page and click to activate Utilities. Go back to the previous page and the missing Deleted Albums reappears.

This is a community of users where people try to help each other. No point in a rant, here. You can send feedback directly to Apple here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

Hint: Complaining to a company that they make too much money will never work. Your only recourse is to vote for people who want to control runaway profits.

What I showed was from my iPhone running iOS 18; hence my answer.

Exactly how do you delete a picture from Photos? Do you still get the "30 days" warning?

I don’t have what you’re showing on your phone, I only have current pictures. I don’t have options for anything else.

Thank you