With iOS 26, Apple finally makes your iPhone's Photos app usable again

Last year, Apple announced a redesigned Photos app, touting it as “the biggest-ever redesign.” Over the past year, we’ve seen users complaining about the redesign and wanting to go back to iOS 17’s Photos app. Apple seems to have listened to all the feedback and fixed its Photos app with the new iOS 26 update.

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“Many of you missed using tabs in the Photos app,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, in his keynote at WWDC 2025. “Photos now features separate tabs for Library and for Collections,” he added. With the new Photos app on iOS 26, Apple is keeping the best of both iOS 17 and iOS 18.

The Photos app redesign I’ve waited for is finally here

iOS 26’s Photos app aims to fix all the major issues by bifurcating the UI into Library and Collections. When you open the Photos app, you enter the Library section, which gives you the whole screen to view your media instead of a 60:40 divide of media and Collections. 

The Library tab makes it easier to scroll through recent photos without tapping on a collection by mistake. It also looks neater. Moving to the other tab will lead you to the collection of Memories, People, Pinned, etc. I look forward to using the cleaner design, and it should help my muscle memory. The segregation of Library and Collections is all I’ve wanted from the iOS 18 Photos app and it is finally here.

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The new Photos app design in iOS 26 will be welcomed by long-time Apple users. This time, however, they will have to train their muscle memory for another photo-related app redesign: the Camera app. Apple’s Camera app now has a viewfinder that displays two options, Videos and Photos. You can swipe left or right to reach other modes like Portrait, Panorama, Cinematic, and more. A swipe up from the bottom of the screen will lead to other settings like flash, timer, etc. 

From the keynote demos, it looked pretty straightforward and less taxing than iOS 18’s Photos app. I expect this Camera redesign to help me reach my settings faster and feel more natural than before. That said, I’m more excited about using the basic-looking Photos app on my iPhone.