What causes Black Boxes in iPhone 16 Pro Photos?

I've found that if I move it to a different key photo, save it, then move it back to the original key photo, the black boxes are gone and I've restored the full quality as it should have been originally. It's a pain, but I haven't lost any photos due to this bug (yet) by using this technique. Does that work for you if you try it? I'm curious if that's consistent across devices..

Is that something you can do when you shoot with Live?

Sorry, accidental repost.

On mine they’re not live photos and don’t know how to recover them at all so I start taking live photos hoping it won’t happen, so far so good and at 1st I thought this issue is only on iPhone 16s but thanks for mentioning that it might be iOS 18 as other iPhone 14/15 users having the same prob

Are the black boxes in the actual image, or is it only Photos.app the viewer that generates them as overlays in certain conditions?

So if you export originals via USB to a Mac (or set AirDrop to export the original with "All Photos Data" option), are the black boxes still there if you open the image in Preview.app?

Mine are on the image when I view it on my phone and it persists after I’ve transferred the photo to my laptop. The one thing I can’t answer is whether it’s visible immediately after I take the photo. I’ve never thought to check. Fortunately so far mine have only affected food photos.

I have the same issue. I have a regular iPhone 16. It's very annoying, even if I export the image into an external photo editor, the box seems to be part of the photo, so there's no way to get rid of it.

Having same problem. iPhone 16pro not Live Photos. Completely black photo, then I try it edit and I see 1/2 the photo, then I go to drop and it’s a mosaic. Phone 1 week old. This is rediculous. I upgraded phone for the camera. And did a closeup and it was completely a mess. Modern art, weird shapes, completely out of focus, nonsense.

Nope, didn’t work for me. I can replace it with a highly compressed non-HDR photo from the Live ‘movie’, but as soon as I try to revert to the original photo, the black frame returns. If I try to edit the photo, I can see that there’s content behind the black square. Please fix this, Apple!

I have the same issue too. 😕

iPhone 16 ProMax,

iOS: 18.3.1,

Not Live Photo.

The photo originally came out completely black. I tried adjusting it by playing with the edit function, and some parts of the image were restored, but there are still two black squares remaining.

This was an interesting finding. I also tried with a photo I had which had some black boxes, and after cranking all the exposure and brightness of the picture I could see some details on the black boxes. This got me thinking, is this somehow related to the image pipeline and the phone mis-recording the data on the multiple pictures it takes with different exposure levels?

My problem with the black boxes seemed to disappear for a few months and now they are suddenly back. :(. I gather no one has found a real solution?

So this is interesting. I've had the problem since day one in Nov 24. It's still happening on 18.4.1 today. But I've discovered that if I use ACDSee Mobile to transfer the images to my PC, there will be two versions of each photo. One version named *.HEIF and the other *.Original.HEIF. The HEIF version is 16:9 as I had used that format to take the pic. The Original.HEIF version is 4:3 and is a low resolution pic. I shall post the images below to illustrate my point. An image is worth a thousand words.

sorry i could only manage to print screen as the forum here would not accept posting of heif files.