Among the many new and redesigned features coming to compatible iPads and iPhones this year with iOS 18 is the biggest-ever redesign of the Photos app. The idea behind the redesign is to help you find photos and special moments more easily. At the heart is a simplified, single view that shows a grid of images along with new collections in intelligently created albums. You’ll also find a carousel view with highlights that update daily, auto-played content, and more. Plus, it’s all customizable. Here’s a rundown of what you can expect.

Library

At the top of the Photos app is your Library, which shows all photos and videos you have taken in chronological order, in a grid pattern with five squares across each row, as it was laid out previously. Scroll left and right through a carousel of Featured Photos, Memories, Favorites, or Videos.

The images that appear seem to be chosen at random as they play, so it’s a wonderful way to look back on your memories of all kinds, ideal for people like me who have 20,000-plus photos on my iPhone!

Additionally, you can customize (just scroll the whole way left to the end or scroll right from the main grid view). With this option, you can replace collections that appear in any of the featured albums. For example, you might want to replace Favorites with another album you have created, like Workout Pics. You can also check or uncheck which collections you want to appear on the phone, like Recent Days, People & Pets, Trips, Shared Albums, and more.

Once set, you can swipe left and right through the top view for a quick at-a-glance look at your favorite highlighted albums. You can also pull down from the top to view the album by Years or Months, or tap the Sort button on the bottom, left to Sort by Recently Added or Sort by Date Captured (default option).

You can also run a Filter or change View Options. A handy option under View Options is to deselect Show Screenshots so that you can get a cleaner view of your album without them.

Recent Days

The next section down is Recent Days, which, as the name implies, highlights the photos you have taken most recently. It’s arranged by days of the week, so as you scroll to the left, you’ll see the last few days, or at least the last few days that you took photos. You can continue scrolling left to go back for about two months’ worth of photos. It’s a nice way to call up specific memories quickly. But it also provides a nice at-a-glance look at the last few months, by showing what you have been up to that has been captured in photos and videos.

People and Pets

Next section down is a carousel view which shows a rotating view of images, starting with you and one other person (presumably someone you appear in plenty of photos with) along with headshots of people who have been captured by facial recognition. Here, as with the existing Photos app, you can click on any headshot and view a collection of images featuring that individual. The main image rotates among various ones, providing a sort of slideshow you can enjoy.

If you click into this section, you’ll find an expanded view of groups, where you can create other groups if you'd like, also sort the headshots of people, add people, and more.

Pinned Collections

The Pinned Collections include by default ones like Favorites, Recently Saved, Maps, Videos, and Screenshots, but you can modify this to show something else. Scroll left to go through these collections, or select Modify to remove a specific type or add something else to this section. Suggestions might include options like Trips, Selfies, and more.

Memories

The content in this section, including random photos that appear from various themes or vacations, for example, will auto-play to look fun and engaging, and help you relive special moments. These might be from vacations, images of you together with a group you often take photos with, winter fun, summer vacation during a specific year, even memories from as far back as a decade (if you have them).

Trips

Under Memories, you’ll find Trips, which lets you relive some of your most recent trips. Once again, the live view scrolls through images automatically so you can be fully immersed in the albums before even opening one up.

Click into this section and you can select by year to see trip albums dating back as far as a decade.

Albums, Shared Albums, and Featured Photos

As you continue to scroll down, next you will see Albums and Shared Albums, which show Albums and Shared Albums you have created (or others have shared with you). Scroll left to go through the options to quickly access any of these albums.

Under Featured Photos, you can see images the phone has selected to highlight from various years and featuring different people.

Media Types and Utilities

The next two sections are quick ways to get into various Media Types, including Videos, Selfies, Live Photos, and Portrait images. Tap Media Type and you’ll see all other options appear, including Time-lapse videos, Slo-mo, Animated images, and more, neatly organized into folders.

Under Utilities, you’ll find Hidden, Recently Deleted, Duplicates, and Receipts. The Hidden and Recently Deleted albums are locked, requiring Face ID as they always have in the Photos app. Receipts is a useful one if you want to call up an image of a receipt you might have captured for splitting costs with a friend, logging as a business expense, or returning an item.

Wallpaper Suggestions

The final section shows suggestions for exciting Wallpapers to use for the device. They feature landmarks from your own scenic pictures, drawn from your library of images and photos. It’s a nice way to gain inspiration if you want to change your Wallpaper but don’t want to scroll endlessly through albums to find the perfect shot. Some feature cool effects, like the one that adjusted the color and style of an image I took of The Sphere in Las Vegas. Others remove backgrounds or create wonderful depth effects to liven up the look of your phone screen.

Customize

At the very bottom of the section is a Customize button, a one-touch option you can tap to customize virtually any section noted above, from Featured Photos and Memories to Collections.

Apple Intelligence

It's also worth noting that the Photos app has enhanced search functionality, which makes it easier to find specific photos. You will be able to use natural language to search for specific photos, describing who is in the photos, what they are doing, and even what they are wearing. However, this feature launches with Apple Intelligence, so it isn’t available to test right now in the developer beta.

You'll also be able to create a Memory Movie with a simple prompt. Tell the phone what you want to create a movie about, like your son learning to ride a bike or his latest softball season, and it will intelligently grab the most fitting photos and videos. It will arrange them logically, creating a story. It will even be able to add fitting Apple Music content for a soundtrack. This feature is also not yet available until the official launch of Apple Intelligence, but it's the one that we're most excited about.

Clean Up Tool

Another feature coming with Apple Intelligence later this year is called Clean Up. Like Google Pixel’s Magic Eraser and Samsung Galaxy’s Object Eraser, you can use this tool to remove distracting elements from the background of a photo. AI will fill in the blanks intelligently while the main subject of the photo remains unaltered. This is one feature I’m especially interested in trying out.

The Photos app is so much nicer

There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the Photos app the way it was, but this refreshed look makes it much more engaging. If you want to find a photo, you don’t need to search using basic parameters like the year it was taken or by face. You can also sit, relax, and watch as photos scroll from your recent vacation or work event, reliving the memories. The Photos app redesign makes your image library more like a story than a grid collection of images. There are so many great features I can’t wait for my iPhone to get with iOS 18, and the final version of the redesigned Photos app is one of them.