Photos Folders messed up after iOS update

I am having this same issue as well. I put off updating the software on my iPhone 4s until I had "cleared out" some space. Before updating, I had purged my photo gallery somewhat. At the time, I only had 2 albums: "All Photos" and "Videos". Any other album or social media connection (i.e. Instagram) I had deleted. However, after I upgraded to the newest IOS, I looked at my photos, and it now has Apple-created albums (Selfies, Screenshots) that I can't change, delete, rename or in anyway, get rid of! My Camera Roll still contains all the pictures as before, and has the option to switch over to collections, but those darn "forced" albums now sitting in my photos really bugs me! Why does Apple keep forcing changes to what SHOULD be a personal preference over pictures WE take? Just like they force their collection of newest apps that appear in the newest software updates & can't be deleted.

Sorry, I digress. Does anyone know how to eliminate the Apple-created photo albums on iPhones with IOS 9.3.4?

Thanks!

Hi. I don't see this. What features have you enabled under Settings > Photos and Camera? It may be that one of them is causing this.

I didn't actually change anything before the IOS update, and didn't change anything after. I just noticed the added preset folders/albums in my photos app.

I just checked the settings. The update shows a "Summarize Photos" option that was switched "on". I don't remember seeing this before. The description says it shows every photo in "all views". Hmm

I turned this option off and the IOS loaded albums still remain. After clicking on "edit" in top right of screen, it doesn't show these albums are allowed to be deleted.

How to remove the selfies folder from your Iphone.

HI!! I finally succeeded in removing the "Selfies" and the "Panoramic" folders from my Iphone 5.

How you wonder? I went through a series of frustrations for months until I systematically discovered what the trick was.

Including such drastic measures as asking for help from apple. (No reply).

Asking the same question from others in multiple communities on line. (No one else was having any better luck than I was. )

Then I finally decided on more drastic measures...........to returned the phone to factory settings.

As soon as I reloaded my original photos from my library on my computer, the selfies folder magically appeared.

Then I tried a recommendation from a site like this one........

I Synced my photos with a re-directed to an empty, newly created folder (Which did actually remove the selfies/pano folders....... along with everything else.) Sigh. Then Synced back to the original folder containing the group of folders with my photos. Still NO LUCK. The selfies and Panoramic folder persisted in staying where they were.

So where are these selfie photos being referenced from? How does Itunes know how to find and reload the photos into the selfies folder even after I go through all manor of restarts and deletions and restores, etc. ? In the Backups? In Itunes? on my computer? On the cloud? (I shut off my cloud access then tried again. Still no luck!) WHERE!?

The truth is..... (Drum roll please).....

They are not folders at all! I was thinking with my eyes rather than my logical mind.

I started to sync to small numbers of photos at a time until I realized the pattern.

The selfies are marked by my iphone as selfies when I take them. Same with Panoramic pix and videos.

Part of the Metadata no doubt.

The IOS is actually trying to help make finding the selfies in my phone easier. So it looks at ALL of the photos in the phone with special Iphone created tags in the Metadata, and links them into a "Folder" named "Selfies" or "Panoramic" or "Video"

Could it be so easy I wondered ?? YES!

---------------------

How to erase these unwanted "folders" from your Iphone.

1. Open your library of folders on your computer, that contains the group of photos that you normally Sync to in Itunes.

2. Compare the phones "selfies" photos with the photos on your computer in the Sync folders.

3. Erase all photos from you computer Sync folders that are contained in your "Selfies" folder on your phone.

4. Sync your phone to the newly edited library of photo folders on your computer.

Done.

As long as any selfies are on your phone anywhere, the phone will create a selfies folder which will contain a copy.

As long as there is a selfie tagged photo in your library of sync folders, Itunes will create a "Selfies" folder so you can find them more easily.

Sigh.

Good luck,

Alexander

Appreciate the info Alexander, but somewhat off-topic. This thread caught my attention because I've been experiencing this exact same problem (Photos Folders messed up after iOS update) for at least a year now, maybe longer, across multiple iOS versions and iPads (iPad 2 and now iPad Pro 9.7). The behavior is as the OP suggested, after iOS update, the albums that I've SYNCED to my iPad from my PC are jumbled up, duplicate subsets, etc. Clearly an rogue indexing problem of some king. Like one of the previous responders, my solution has been to first sync to an empty target folder on my PC, perform the iOS update, then sync again to a fully populated folder (6000 photos) on my PC. Tedious and maddening, and will likely never get fixed, but at least it works.

Well, yes its done it yet again. I have just updated my ipad pro 9.7 to 9.3.5 and the photo albums are duplicated, jumbled up, wrong photo in the albums etc. Same as it does every single update. I did ring Apple about this a while ago but their only "help" was to restore the ipad!

Luckily since I started using CopyTrans it doesnt take as long as trying to use the abomination iTunes. Used to take literally days when itunes wouldnt remove photos, add them or anything despite saying it was complete.

Just as an aside I find it ironic that these forums dont work properly on an ipad, I have to fire up my Windows laptop!

I've been dealing with this for years. I suspect that it's something that Apple doesn't choose to work on since it seems to affect primarily iTunes running on PC vs. Mac. I'd really like to know if anyone using a Mac is affected?

I'm on a Mac and I have the same problem, and have had for all updates for a few years - I've also changed Macs over that time and continued to have the problem on the new Mac

Good to know (I guess!) At least I know that I going out and buying a Mac won't solve this problem!!! It really is very irritating, as it takes hours to reload my photos after every minor iOS update!! Unbelievable that Apple ignores this problem!! I may start managing my photos with Adobe Lightroom Mobile to avoid using iTunes for photos altogether.

I dont use itunes at all for syncing photos and music. I always get the problem so its nothing to do with syncing with itunes.

Just been looking at the total mess of my photo albums and realised its an even bigger mess than usual. Somehow, and I cant begin to fathom why, there are photo albums with the usual random jumble in them but with names that I had deleted a few years ago. How on earth are the deleted album names being resurrected by updating the os?

Why dont Apple sort this. Its enough to stop me updating as it takes ages to redo it all.

To fix it I reconnect my iPad to my computer's iTunes, deselect one of my photo albums and sync, and then re-select it and resync - that puts my albums back to how they should be

Dear innocent victims of iTunes.

Since recent iOS updating on my iPad, I can no longer run iTunes from my Windows 10 (32 bits) machine. And after numerous vain trials to push photos and videos into the iPad, I fortunately got the tool FoneTrans (but not free). With this solution, the photos appear automatically on the iPad screen in their original chronological order.

Cheers. Crigou.

I use a similar tool called copyTrans. This does work reasonably well. The problem isnt with getting photos onto the ipad cos CopyTrans handles that. Its when there is an ios update and updating over the air changes the photo albums to such an extend that they have to be redone.