iOS 18 Photo Search Results - tiny thumbnails not usable

In my photos app (iOS 18), when I do a search, the results are returned in tiny thumbnails that are too small to be usable. Within photos search results, the typical "pinch to zoom" gesture does not increase the size of the thumbnails or show fewer per row (thereby increasing size)—just nothing happens.

I can select an individual photo and make it larger.

But one-by-one-tapping-on-each-photo renders search useless.

Let's say I search for something and am returned 300 tiny thumbnails as the result.

To know if the photo I am searching for is in those results, I must click on each of 300 photos in order to have a large enough visual representation for me to make a judgment about it.

This behavior holds true both on iPad and iPhone.

In addition to being bad for typical users, it's an accessibility issue for those whose vision is impaired.

It also represents a loss of expected features from previous versions of iOS, where you could use gestures to change the size of the thumbnails in photo search results just as you can in the photo library (or camera roll as it was in previous versions).

OR - am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else figured out how to increase the size of thumbnails after searching their photo library in iOS 18?

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to accustom myself to the new Photos app and have adjusted to many things that initially seemed difficult, but I can't figure out a workable way to get Photos > Search to show me thumbnails that are large enough to impart meaning.

Suggestions?

Is it a design flaw? Will it be addressed?

Is there a setting I should use rather than the pinch and expand gestures? Like, if I could set photo search results to be 3 thumbnails across or something? This would not be as good or consistent as pinching, but maybe there was some engineering reason it needed to be a setting instead of a gesture—and it would help some.

Please tell me how to increase the size of the thumbnails in Photos search results.

Thanks.