The Photos app redesign in iOS 18 was, by a wide margin, the most complained about change Apple made that year. It deleted the tab bar, poured everything into one endless scrolling view, and hid the filters behind a gesture nobody discovered by accident. People I know stayed on iOS 17 specifically because of it.

iOS 26 walks a good part of that back. Here is what changed, where the useful buttons now live, and the one thing Apple quietly took away while it was fixing the rest.

The tab bar is back

At a glance

iOS 26 Photos App Changes Worth Knowing
Cost
Free, forever
Account
None needed
App Store
No install
Runs on
iPhone, via Shortcuts

The headline change is structural. Photos in iOS 26 has a tab bar again, with buttons to switch between Library and Collections, which are now two separate sections instead of one merged feed. Search has its own button at the bottom of the screen, moved down from the top where it used to sit.

That sounds minor written down. In use it fixes the main complaint about iOS 18, which was that you never knew where you were. Library is your photos in date order, the way it worked for years. Collections is everything Apple generates for you. Two places, two buttons.

Scrolling in Library still brings up the Years and Months options, with buttons to get back to the tab bar or jump into search.

Filters are visible again, and this is the one to learn

There is now a clearly visible button in Library for filters and view options. It lets you zoom the grid in and out, and, more usefully, exclude things from the view.

The two exclusions worth setting are screenshots and Shared With You images. If you are the sort of person who screenshots a dozen things a day, your camera roll is mostly not photographs, and turning screenshots off makes the library feel like a photo library again.

Shared With You pulls in images people sent you in Messages, which is convenient in theory and clutter in practice for most people.

These filters existed in iOS 18. The difference is that the button was hidden until you started scrolling, so a lot of people never knew it was there. Now it is just a button.

Collections, and where the useful albums hide

The Collections tab holds the views that used to be crammed into the unified feed: Recent Days at the top, then People and Pets, Pinned, Memories, Trips, Albums and Featured Photos. Because it has its own screen, you can see more of it at once.

Further down are two sections that are worth knowing by name, because they answer most “where did my file go” questions.

  • Media Types splits your library by what the file is. Videos, Screenshots, Screen Recordings, Live Photos, Selfies, Portrait, Panoramas, Bursts and the rest each get their own album, generated automatically.
  • Utilities holds Imports, Duplicates, Hidden and Recently Deleted. Imports is the one people forget exists, and it is where anything that arrived from outside the camera tends to surface, including videos you saved out of Safari.

In iOS 26 those two sections have larger, more distinct buttons, which makes it obvious that you can tap through to more options rather than only swipe.

You can now reshape Collections, up to a point

There is a much more visible Reorder button in Collections, so dragging your most used views to the top is discoverable now. Collections can also be collapsed, so a section you never open shows only its name instead of a row of thumbnails.

There is a control at the top for collapsing everything at once, showing everything, reordering, or switching view style, and you get a choice of three layouts: a large hero thumbnail with smaller ones below, all large, or all small.

The thing Apple removed while adding all that: you can no longer exclude specific types of collection entirely. Collapsing is the closest replacement, and it is not quite the same, since a collapsed collection is still on screen taking up a row. If you were using exclusions to keep Memories out of your life, you will notice.

Spatial Scenes, and what it actually is

iOS 26 adds a feature called Spatial Scenes, which separates the subject of a photo from its background and adds a slight parallax movement when you tilt the phone. Open a photo, tap the small hexagon icon at the top right, and move your iPhone.

Three things about it are worth knowing. It works on any photo, including ones that have been sitting in your library for a decade, because it is generating the depth rather than reading depth data that was captured at the time.

It runs on iPhone 12 and newer. And despite using generative AI, it does not require Apple Intelligence, which makes it one of the few genuinely new visual features available on older supported hardware this year.

It is a viewing effect. It does not change the file, and sharing the photo sends a normal flat image.

Liquid Glass, and whether it gets in the way

Photos got the same Liquid Glass treatment as the rest of iOS 26, and it is one of the apps where the translucency is most obvious. The two button tab bar shows your photos through it, and it stays translucent when it expands into the larger navigation bar with the months and years controls.

The intent is that the photos hold your attention and the controls fade back. Mostly it works. Over a busy image the labels can get harder to read than they were on a solid bar, which is the standard cost of translucency and a matter of taste rather than a bug.

What did not change, and why that matters

The share sheet. It is the same share sheet, in the same place, reached by the same button, and it is still where every genuinely useful file operation on an iPhone starts.

That is not an accident of neglect. The share sheet is a platform feature rather than a Photos feature, which is why it has survived several rounds of redesign intact, and why building tools that live in it is a reasonable bet. Everything below runs on your own device using Apple’s own Shortcuts actions, uploads nothing and works in airplane mode.

Grabio is the free Apple Shortcut that puts all of those in one menu in that share sheet. No App Store install, no account, no daily cap. Get the Shortcut if you want them.

iOS 26 Photos app: FAQ

How do I hide screenshots from my Photos library in iOS 26?

Open the Library tab, tap the filters and view options button, and turn off screenshots. The same control lets you exclude Shared With You images and change the grid zoom. It existed in iOS 18 as a hidden control and is now a visible button.

Where did the Photos tabs go, and are they back?

iOS 18 removed them in favour of one unified scrolling view. iOS 26 brings a tab bar back with separate Library and Collections sections, plus a Search button at the bottom of the screen.

Can I still exclude collections I never use?

Not entirely. iOS 26 removed the option to exclude specific collection types. You can collapse a collection so it shows only its name, and you can drag collections into whatever order you like using the Reorder button, which is more visible than it used to be.

Does Spatial Scenes need Apple Intelligence?

No. It uses generative AI to build depth from a flat image, and it runs on iPhone 12 and newer without requiring Apple Intelligence. Tap the hexagon icon at the top right of a photo, then tilt your phone.

Where do videos I save from Safari end up in Photos?

In Recents, dated the day you saved them rather than the day they were made. If you cannot find one, check Imports under the Utilities section of the Collections tab, and check the Videos album under Media Types.

Did iOS 26 change what the Photos share sheet can do?

No. The share sheet is a system feature rather than part of the Photos redesign, so the conversion, compression and export tools that live there behave exactly as they did before the update.