Unable to add photos to albums in photos app

Somehow, you have an album named "All Photos" that isn't all our photos and, in fact, is empty. If you want to make a new album, go to the Library like you showed here, and do what I suggested before:

If I want to add pictures to an album, I would select the pictures (in Library, probably) and choose More (•••) [at lower right] and Add to Album. It would show me a bunch of my albums, so I could pick one or choose +, where it would ask for a name for a new album. Either way, I'd then choose the album and they'd be added.

If I were you, I'd select the album "All Photos," go to More (•••) and delete the album. With nothing in it, it's pretty useless.

Can you give us more information? As MrHoffman suggests, we just don't know enough to help.

I don't have an "All Photos" on my iPad running iPadOS 18.5. And I can't reproduce your screenshot. You say you are using iPadOS 18, but which version, exactly?

If I want to add pictures to an album, I would select the pictures (in Library, probably) and choose More (•••) and Add to Album. It would show me a bunch of my albums, so I could pick one or choose +, where it would ask for a name for a new album. Either way, I'd then choose the album and they'd be added.

What are you doing that's different?

asher271 wrote:

I have iPadOS 18.5

Okay. That’s part of this.

That ”All Photos” looks like an album created locally, or created when the iPad was synced.

The list of all photos in the library will be at the top of that same left column, at the very top. If there are any photos here. Scroll the left column to the top, select, and see how many photos are shown.

You don’t have any photos. That could be because you don’t have any photos, or iCloud Photos is not enabled, or iCloud Photos is enabled, but for a different Apple Account, or your photo library is stored on a Mac or PC and has not been synced via cable yet, or your iPad photo library is offline or corrupted, among other potential causes.

There’s a lot going on here.

Your photos show more than a few errors and issues, and some photos of discussions of performing migrations of photos to other hosting services, and there are images that look like some app development activity might be happening here.

Can you tell us some of the recent history about this device and this photo library?

Was this photo library synced from a Mac or PC?

asher271 wrote: I have iPadOS 18.5

Good start. How about all the other questions we had? What steps did you go through to get the screen that you posted? Really, we can't help much without your information.