Apple Photos on the iPhone: Part 1 - The Library View
BROWSING FOR BIRTHDAYS
Last year Apple stirred up a hornet’s nest of criticism by giving Apple Photos the biggest facelift since it launched in 2015. It was most disruptive on the iPhone, where display space is at a premium. Instead of four purpose driven sections - Photos, For You, Albums, and Search - Apple moved everything to a single Home Page that offered the whole Library grid stacked above “Collections,” which included all the familiar smart albums like People, Maps, Videos, Live Photos, Featured, Memories, Panoramas, etc., plus user created Albums and Shared Albums. There were also some new Collections including Trips, Recently Viewed, Recently Saved, and Recent Days.
Opening Apple Photos on your iPhone or iPad would land you at the division between the Library view (scroll up) and the Collections (scroll down).
It was a user experience you either loved or hated. For many people, scrolling down to get to their Albums or People & Pets Collection was just more scrolling. For others of us, being able to customize the Collections layout for quicker access to favorite photos was brilliant.
In this year’s upgrade, Apple split the difference by dividing the mobile experience back into two separate pages - Library and Collections. Still wildly better than the old multiple tabs layout, but somewhat less elegant than last year, in my opinion. More about that in Part 2.
The Library is more than just a grid
By default, when you open your iOS 26 Photos app you will land in the familiar Library grid view.
Let’s look at that.
Back in the day, when the iPhone was new, there was nothing as cool as scrolling through your pictures. A quick swipe had some inertia and you could skim through your photos in nothing flat. It was kind of like those fidget devices - fun for just the practice of it but with a practical purpose.
This is browsing. Finding pictures just by recognition. And for most of us it’s the default way we get around our Library.
A couple things about it.
When you launch Photos you land at the most recent end of your Library, so browsing works best for your latest pictures. Trying to find something from two months ago can get tedious if you need to find it on the spot. Putting together a group of related photos from throughout the Library is even worse. Back when our Libraries were 3000 images, it was not so bad, but with 30,000 and more browsing becomes less efficient. Trying to find Sally’s last birthday is not as easy as it used to be.
Fortunately, the Library is more than just a grid. There’s a lot more going on here.
The biggest challenge with browsing on the iPhone is the tiny size of the thumbnail images in the grid. And if that wasn’t bad enough, everything is cropped to a square. A third of every picture is missing, so they look different than we might remember. Trying to pin down a shot from years ago requires a more nuanced approach.
For starters, the Library grid can be adjusted in size by pinching or spreading your fingers. You can choose from 5 sizes:
Years
Months
5 Across
3 Across
Full image
So if you are somewhat clear about a picture’s time frame, it’s fairly quick to narrow things down to an easily browsable group. Then you can go to the Full Image view and scroll through quite fast.
Another way to do that is by scrolling down from the opening grid view until the Menu pops up and you can tap on Years, Months, or All.
The nifty thing about this Years view is that it shows you a preview image from this date in that year. Want to know where you were on this date in 2023? Now you can. It makes a good party ice-breaker.
Months view starts with your current month and works backwards, showing you a sampler of key moments (by Apple’s algorithm) from each month.
All, of course, is what we’re used to seeing in Library view. Our seemingly infinite camera roll.
Tapping on the Library icon in the lower left gets us back to the latest photos in whatever view is current.
But we’re not finished here.
Customizing the Library page
Tapping on the Settings icon (3 lines) on the upper left corner of the display will bring up more options to customize the Library.
Sort Order - By default the Library sorts according to the CaptureDate on each image. The oldest images are toward the top of the grid and the newest ones at the bottom. That includes photos you have imported from Messages, emails, AirDrop, or some download. In a perfect world, all images will have a digital CaptureDate stamp that reflects what actual date they were created. Then you will have a correct chronological history of your images in the Library.
But there may be instances where you imported a photo without a CaptureDate. Or you just don’t know when it was Captured. Like an old photo shared by your college friend. You know saved it to your Library but you can’t find it. In that case you can change the Sort order to date Recently Added. Once you find it, you can adjust the date stamp to reflect your college days and change the Sort Order back to Date Captured.
The Settings dialogue also lets you choose which Library - Personal or Shared - to show in the grid if you are part of a Shared Library group. You can see a mix of the two or either one by itself.
Filter lets you fine tune what content you want to see in the Library. All Items is the usual choice, of course, but you might be working on a project where it’s handy to narrow your choices. If you are collecting pictures for a photo book, you might want to choose only Photos, since Videos aren’t relevant. Maybe just choosing Shared With You will find that college photo faster than changing the whole Library sort to Recently Added.
Finally, there’s View Options.
Zoom In/Zoom Out does the same thing as pinching and spreading our fingers. It adjusts the which of the 5 grid scales you’re using, but doesn’t require the same dexterity.
Don’t be square
Next is Aspect Ratio Grid, and it’s the hidden gem of Library settings.
I think the a square grid of images looks clean and cool, but I also think it’s much harder to browse. Cropping an image to a square format changes it quite a bit. We know this from cropping photos as a creative tool. Viewing them teeny-tiny on a grid with dozens of other images makes finding them even harder. And that’s the whole point of Library View. Seeing a whole image with white around is much easier to read and quicker to identify with either 3 Across or 5 Across.
Switch your Library to Aspect View for a week and see if you agree. You can always switch it back.
The last section offers more fine-tuning of content.
I take a lot of screenshots on my iPhone, but I don’t want them cluttering up my Photos Library when I’m out and looking for a photo to share. By unchecking them I can limit my iPhone Library to actual photos. If I want to see them I can always go to the Screenshots Collection in Media Types or wait until they show up on my Mac.
I do include Shared With You photos and I want to see the Shared Library Badge so I know if a picture is from my Personal Library or the Shared Library with my business. Both of those are checked.
As you can see, there’s a lot more to the Library View than just a grid of pictures. Browsing for your photos is certainly not dead but benefits from some manual ‘search’ techniques to narrow down your task. Using Year and Month guidelines to get you close and then choosing to apply Aspect View and browsing the full images let you zero in on your picture so much quicker than before.
In Apple Photos on the iPhone: Part 2, I will introduce you to the Collections page and how it sets the foundation for Photos management going forward.
If your photos are living on Apple devices - iPhone, iPad, Mac, iCloud - and you are confused, overwhelmed, or just eager to understand all the in’s and out’s of this amazing photography system, let me help you. You can see me at Bluewater Imaging. I provide easy to understand support and training to people worldwide.
Email paul@bluewaterimaging.com or book a free 15 minute phone consult HERE