iPhone 18 changed my photo library

[bykfixer]

So, I've been using an iPhone 14 for a while and had made some photo albums using some of the few thousand I have stored on it. They're also on the cloud. But suddenly it looked like they were all gone.

Opening "albums" showed a bunch of empty folders. I've been using an early version of ios 18 and until today all was normal. Suddenly, that changed. But what happend? Having had numerous iPhones over the years I had stored 10's of thousands of photos on the cloud. Numerous old folders that were not synced to the 14 suddenly appeared, yet it was only the folder name and no content.

That's all well and good if I wanted to sync every photo ever onto this device. But do I want to sync nearly 100,000 photos onto the current iPhone? Well, not really. The change had put all of those empty folders in front of the ones currently on the device. So when I opened my photos and scrolled down to albums all I saw on the screen was 0 contents. I opened the albums section by touching the > symbol and saw a list of all available.

You can move them around but I didn't want to have to move my 10 or so current albums up the screen one at a time past about 100 empty folders so I deleted the empty folders from my phone.

Bottom line, if you suddenly see what looks like your albums have disappeared that's what happened. Very annoying Apple.

 

[Rossymeister]

I have about 11,000 photos on my iphone. Old scanned photos that go back to the 60's. I try and backup everything to the computer every 3 months or so.

I had an old iphone several years back that froze and wouldnt turn back on. Not sure what happened with it.

Made me realize just how fragile these things really are.

 

[bykfixer]

I have about 11,000 photos on my iphone. Old scanned photos that go back to the 60's. I try and backup everything to the computer every 3 months or so.

I had an old iphone several years back that froze and wouldnt turn back on. Not sure what happened with it.

Made me realize just how fragile these things really are.

Most definitely. Back up to a back up back up is wise.

 

[scalpel_ninja]

Was iCloud Photos off, then later turned on with a software update?

 

[Chauncey Gardener]

100,000 photos

 

[aznsx]

Most definitely. Back up to a back up back up is wise.

I consider it an absolute requirement, and in my case, it must be both local, and completely within my control. I don't use phones for imaging, but if I did, I'd probably back up to the 'cloud' too for convenience - but my primary backup would always be a local device. Edit: ...actually 2 local HDDs for most files (at least the .jpgs), for redundancy.

 

[LuxLuthor]

So, I've been using an iPhone 14 for a while and had made some photo albums using some of the few thousand I have stored on it. They're also on the cloud. But suddenly it looked like they were all gone.

Opening "albums" showed a bunch of empty folders. I've been using an early version of ios 18 and until today all was normal. Suddenly, that changed. But what happend? Having had numerous iPhones over the years I had stored 10's of thousands of photos on the cloud. Numerous old folders that were not synced to the 14 suddenly appeared, yet it was only the folder name and no content.

That's all well and good if I wanted to sync every photo ever onto this device. But do I want to sync nearly 100,000 photos onto the current iPhone? Well, not really. The change had put all of those empty folders in front of the ones currently on the device. So when I opened my photos and scrolled down to albums all I saw on the screen was 0 contents. I opened the albums section by touching the > symbol and saw a list of all available.

You can move them around but I didn't want to have to move my 10 or so current albums up the screen one at a time past about 100 empty folders so I deleted the empty folders from my phone.

Bottom line, if you suddenly see what looks like your albums have disappeared that's what happened. Very annoying Apple.

I wonder if that may come in an Apple update to fix it?