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.
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