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iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

The Photos application packaged with iOS 4 always sorted the photos by the "date taken" from the EXIF data.

The Photos application packaged with iOS 5 uses some other sorting scheme. Possibly "none".


Can anyone shed any light, or is this a bona fide bug?

Posted on Oct 13, 2011 10:43 AM

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202 replies

Oct 14, 2011 12:38 PM in response to jo_de_cologne

I got around the problem by changing the Windows Last Modification Date. To be more precise I did the following:

1. Select all photos in the Windows Explorer.

2 Right click and choose the Properties option.

3. Select the Details tab.

4. Add a bogus title to the photos

5. Click Accept.


As you can see, the Windows Last Modification Date has been updated and you have not changed ta single pixel of the photo.


Now remove the iTunes Photo Cache folder, change the photo synch folder in iTunes to an empty directory And synch. This will remove Ll synched photos from your iDevice. Now restore the photo synch folder in iTunes and resynch. If all goes well, all photos are now in alphabetical order of file name or by Date Photo Taken EXIF Property (dont't konw exactly on what iTunes falls back when the Last Modified Date is the same).


What I would like to know is, why photos were correctly sorted by EXIF properties in iOS 4 and iTunes 10.4, but by file modification date in iOS 5 and iTunes 10.5. I dont even know who is to blame: iOS or iTunes.


Brgds, Marc

Oct 17, 2011 2:54 PM in response to Orthonormal

I have almost 18 000 photos on my iPad and the were sorted in "date taken" order within each folder. This was perfect for me. Now, they appear to be sorted in the alphabetical names that I have given each photo (describing the location of the shot or the subject). This is disastrous. The photos are so far out of order viewing photos on the iPad is useless. At the very least, I need the sort that was in place ("date taken" and/or chronological order) from IOS 4. Better yet, please give me the ability to choose a rudimentary selection of sorts.


Please give me the old way back, indeed. I can't view photos that are in alpha order!

Oct 17, 2011 9:27 PM in response to brianfromnorth vancouver

yes, this is pretty much making my ipad useless for presenting images to clients (which is one of the main reasons i bought an ipad in the first place). I have over 5,000 images on my ipad sorted by subject/theme and/or date under IOS4, now i have 5k random images in folders in random order that makes no sense. if i re-arrange them on the ipad itself, it's awesome until i sync and then it falls back into the useless seemingly random order. I can't sort them in iphoto, i can't sort them in itunes and i can't sort them in the ipad itself. i can't specifiy even to do reverse chronological order.


how did this seem like a good idea at the time?!?


how difficult is it to revert back to IOS4?

Oct 18, 2011 3:50 PM in response to Orthonormal

I have exactly the same problem with iOS5, photos app and synchronization seem to be pretty much broken. However, I sometimes get the correct sort order (by date/time the photo was taken) if I only sync certain albums. But the common case is by file modification date which is completely useless.


Even worse: each time I synchronize or delete photos (via USB from a Windows PC) the free memory decreases while memory allocated to 'other' increases. This can only be fixed by completely restoring iOS but even then not all photos are synced, some albums stay empty.


Reverting to iOS4 seems to be very difficult. I can't believe nobody noticed these glitches during beta testing. I mean it took them really long and if I take other issues into account (iPad 1 performance issues,...) this release is a big disappointment.


Please fix photos sync and sort order ASAP. A lot of people are using an iPad primarily for displaying photos and now they can't even revert to the old version that actually supported this.


Whoever is using photos and hasn't updated to iOS5 yet: DON'T.

Oct 19, 2011 5:01 AM in response to Orthonormal

To me it seems that the ordering is only broken in album/folders that were imported. If you create any new album on your device, sorting is as with iOS 4 (by date/time)


This gives an easy way (workaround) to have photos be sorted the old way with iOS5:

  • Import all your photos via iTunes. They will be in wrong order in the imported folders/album(s).
  • Create a new album
  • Copy all photos into the new album. (You end up with two albums with the same content. As the pictures are linked only into the second album, this should not use any extra space)
  • The new album contains photos in the right order.


Never use the old album, just irgnore it. Once Appple fixes the stupid bug, you may remove the album you manually created.


Best,


Jonas

Oct 20, 2011 12:56 AM in response to Orthonormal

I have round about 90 Albums on my ipad, which I have organized by leading numbers

representing categories, i.e. 01 Vacation 2008, 01 Vacation 2009,... 02 Business 2008 and so on.

That worked perfect - until iOS 5.


Now the order is totally messed up, I have no idea how I can find certain pictures among the albums and

almost 11,000 pictures.


It is totally useles now.

And the above described solution with creating new folders on the ipad is no solution for me.

What will happen with the next sync?


regards

rmb

Oct 20, 2011 4:24 AM in response to Orthonormal

This is a really annoying problem. Photostream is also affected (I tried the Windows version to upload pictures taken with my camera to upload pictures).


I used to sync thousands of photos to my IPad but without some kind of order this is useless.


My workaround for now is uploading all my pictures in private albums on Picasa webalbums. For watching this albums I use an app called "Web Albums". With the introduction of Google+ there seems to be no limit on uploading in Picasa. I already uploaded thousand of pictures and hundreds of videos but it counts only as 15 MB against the free limit of 1 GB. So I will upload all pictures I previously had on my IPad plus Videos taken with my camera that did not work on the IPad. In "Web Albums" I can even cache complete albums to use them when I have no internet connection.


Even when this bug gets fixed I think I will stay with this workaround as I do not have to sync to my computer any longer and the photos do not occupy such a lot of space on my IPad. As a bonus I can also access my photos using any webbrowser...

iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

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