Apple is hitting the brakes on some Updates to the Photos app in iOS 18. The company made some changes on Monday to take into account user feedback – removing some features and fixing others. The hacked version can be found in the fifth beta version of the software, which software developers can install today.
The biggest change is that Apple has completely removed Carousel from the Photos app. The iOS 18 feature used “in-device intelligence” (which, confusingly, is not the same as Apple Intelligence) to aggregate what it thinks is your best content and put them in a scrollable queue. Previously found to the right of the photo grid, it’s now completely gone, helping Apple clean up one of the features that earned it a healthy amount of complaints from beta testers.
Additionally, Apple changed the All Photos view in today’s update to show a larger grid of photos. The company also added Last Saved content to its Last Days collection. Finally, Apple has made albums easier to find for multiple users. (Difficulty finding that section was a common complaint among testers.)
Apple has proposed changes to the Photos app as one of the pillars of the 2024 software update. Although the app is made into a single look and designed to be more customizable, it often ends up being a hodgepodge of extra features that most people won’t need, sometimes making it difficult to find what you’re looking for.
Reddit handle Voted up some of the most frequently complained complaints with over 1,000 upvotes since July. “Once again, we’re taking a quick-to-use program and making it one experience for no reason” commented u/thiskillstheredditor. “I just want the ability to sort camera roll and maybe photos by location. It used to be great, maybe a little bloated. But it’s an unfixable mess.”
Time will tell if today’s updates are enough to clean up the app’s user experience before iOS 18 is released to the public in the fall. There are no changes yet public beta but it will probably appear in the next version or soon.
