The Photos App is AMAZING when you know how to use it (full iPhone tutorial)

0:00 last year with the release of iOS 18 Apple completely overhauled the Photos app and let's just say the response was mixed it's clear that Apple put a lot of work into the redesign but if you've spent any time in the comments section on YouTube or reading online reviews you'll know a lot of people feel pretty strongly that they went too far and I get it photos is easily one of the top five mostused apps on the iPhone so any major changes are going to ruffle a few feathers personally I actually think the new version is pretty good but I also understand why some people are frustrated because like with any major redesign half the battle is just figuring out how to use it properly so in this video I'm going to give you a full walkthrough of the Photos app in iOS 18 what's changed what's new and how

0:45 to actually get the most out of it all right so opening up the Photos app let's start with probably the most confusing part of the new design and that's the way that Apple now separates your photo library from everything else in the previous version of the app this was really clear you had a set of buttons along the bottom of the screen that let you easily jump between different sections simple logical easy to use but in iOS 18 Apple's gone with this new split screen layout the top three quarters of the screen is your photo library the bottom quarter is everything else albums people places memories and so on the weird part is when you first open the app you're not really in either section properly you're kind of in limbo you've got the select button at the top like you're in the library and you can

1:31 scroll through recent photos but at the same time you've got access to some of the other options sitting just below that like the part of the bottom section to properly access either area you need to swipe down to expand your library or up to open up all the other features it's an unusual design choice and I'm not entirely sure why Apple did it this way but I know from experience that it catches a lot of people offguard the first time that they use the app so if it felt confusing to you hopefully that clears things up in terms of navigation there really isn't a huge amount more to cover beyond what we've already talked about but there are still a few things worth pointing out first the search button it's that little blue icon at the top of your screen now it can sometimes get a bit lost in your photos feed which is frustrating but that's where it is

2:18 tap that and you'll be able to search your photo library but we'll dive deeper into that a little bit later on next up is the select button that lets you manually choose one or more photos so you can share them delete them or make other edits again I'll come back to that in a bit more detail later on then in the top right corner you've got your photos profile icon if you tap that you'll get quick access to any photos that have been shared with you you can also change a few settings here like how the app behaves whether or not to set up a shared library and whether you want featured content like memories and suggested photos to appear automatically there are also a couple of reset options at the bottom if you want to start over with your layout now if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the main screen you'll see a button that says

3:03 customize and reorder and honestly this is one of the most useful parts of the new app because it fixes one of the biggest complaints that people have about it when you tap into this section you'll see a full list of all the different content areas that Apple includes by default in the Photos app things like people and pets trips memories media types utilities and a few others you can go through this list and turn off anything that you don't use that doesn't delete any of your photos or videos it just hides that section from the main screen it makes the whole app feel a lot less cluttered and much more personal to the way that you actually use it you can also change the order of how those sections appear by dragging them up or down so my advice here is simple be ruthless turn off

3:49 anything that you don't need and make the app work better for you now just for the sake of this video I'm going to keep everything turned on so that I can show you how each section works but on my personal phone I only keep a few of these visible shared albums recent days media types and utilities that's it everything else I have switched off it just makes everything cleaner and quicker to get to do you ever feel like you're only scratching the surface of what your iPhone can do do you find it hard to remember all of the tips and tricks that people show you or that you watch in YouTube videos like this if so you should definitely check out the brand new training portal that I've just launched iPhone Essentials Plus it's more than 100 tips for the iPhone with another hundred being added over the next few weeks covering every aspect of your iPhone each module contains lessons

4:36 and each lesson contains a tutorial video a step-by-step guide with screenshots and a downloadable PDF so no matter how you like to learn you're covered you can work through each lesson in order or you can pick and choose what you want to learn at any given time there's no ads no sponsors just content and you can access it on your iPhone or your tablet or home computer plus no monthly subscription this is a one-time only payment with lifelong access to all of the content including all future updates if this sounds good to you scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the description of this video okay let's scroll up and take a closer look at the library view when you do that you'll notice a few extra buttons appear down at the bottom of the screen you'll see a little arrow icon pointing up and down you'll see options for years months

5:23 and all and you'll also see a small cross in the bottom right corner that cross button will take you back to the main view the one that you see when you first open the photos app but if you head back into the library again those other buttons give you different ways to browse your collection by default you'll be in the all view that just shows you every image in your library in one continuous grid if you tap months your media will be grouped together by the month that it was captured and you can scroll through and tap into anything that looks interesting to dive deeper into that time period years works in the same way just zoomed out perfect if like me you've been using Apple devices for a long time now and want to revisit your older content quickly now that up down arrow button is where things get a bit more interesting tap that and you can

6:09 choose how your media is sorted at the top you've got the option to sort by date captured or recently added by default your library is set to sort by date captured and that means that your media is arranged based on when it was originally taken even if it wasn't taken by you so let's say that you download an image from Safari you would expect it to show up as the latest photo in your library but sometimes it's nowhere to be found and then weeks later you scroll up and spot it at the top of your library from years ago that's because the image file has an old capture date embedded in it if that kind of thing drives you mad you can switch the sorting to recently added instead that way your newest files no matter where they came from will always appear at the bottom of your library which one's better really depends on how you use your phone if you're downloading or receiving a lot of

6:56 media from others recently added might make more sense for you otherwise you can probably leave it on date captured just below that is the filter option and this lets you fine-tune what you're actually seeing in the library you can filter your view to only show favorites or only images and videos that have been edited you can narrow it down to just photos or just videos or even just screenshots you can also view content that's been shared with you or items that aren't in any album you can even combine multiple filters to create a custom view the only real downside here is that you can't save these filters so you can't create a custom filtered view and return to it later hopefully that's something that Apple adds in a future update for now you would just manually apply your filters and then tap all items at the top to clear them and go

7:43 back to your full view next to filters is view options this lets you zoom in and out of your photo grid either using the buttons here or just by using the usual pinch and spread gesture like you would when zooming in on a photo you can also choose how images are displayed either as squares or in their original aspect ratios really down to personal preference at the bottom of this menu you've got two really handy toggles one for hiding or showing screenshots and another for hiding or showing shared images and videos so if your library is constantly filling up with memes from your group chats or random screenshots that you've taken for work and you don't want those cluttering up your main photo feed you can hide them here just to be clear this doesn't delete anything it just hides them from your main library

8:28 view you can still access them later through the media type section or just by turning these options back on again oh and one last tip that's really useful if you've got a large photo library and it's not just for photos by the way it works across a lot of iPhone apps if you want to jump to the very top of your library instead of scrolling endlessly just tap the time at the top of your screen your phone will instantly scroll to the very first image or video in your library and if you want to go back to your most recent content just tap that cross icon in the bottom right corner and it will take you right back down to the latest stuff if you're enjoying the content here why not sign up for my weekly newsletter which is all about tech news and tips delivered free to your inbox each Friday sign up via the QR code on screen or the link in the

9:14 description okay while we're still in the library let's talk about editing and we'll start with editing a photo now this is actually one of the most common complaints I see whenever people talk about the new photos app a lot of people just can't figure out where the edit button is supposed to be so let me show you start by choosing the photo that you want to edit and tapping into it down at the bottom of the screen you'll see a few familiar buttons on the far left there's the share icon you can tap that to send the image via messages WhatsApp email however you want to share it next to that the heart icon lets you favorite the image i'll show you where those favorites go later on in the video the little eye icon is your info button you tap that to see things like when the image was captured any available metadata and the location if that's been

10:01 recorded in the bottom right corner the bin icon is exactly what you'd expect it's how you delete the photo now the button that you're actually looking for to make edits is the one with three lines and little dots it's meant to represent sliders but I completely understand why a lot of people find this confusing most people are just looking for a button that actually says edit but this is the one that you want tap it and the screen will switch into edit mode if you're using a phone that supports photo styles that's the first thing that you'll see here think of styles as a set of one-tap presets that instantly change the look of your photo kind of like simplified Lightroom filters you can swipe through them and find one that you like then if you want to tweak it further you can tap the little square icon and use the slider at the bottom to adjust the intensity you can also use

10:48 your finger on the square preview to shift the tone and color balance of the preset it's actually a really fun way to make big changes to your photo quickly without having to manually adjust every setting once you're happy tap the photo again to go back to the styles menu now here's another thing that catches people out you might be tempted to tap the done button right away but be careful in the Photos app done doesn't mean save this one change it means I'm finished editing completely so if you're planning to make more changes like adjusting brightness or cropping the image don't hit done yet instead scroll through the editing options at the bottom and keep making your edits then hit done once you're properly finished also up in the top left corner you'll see two arrows the one pointing left is your undo button

11:34 the one pointing right is redo so if you make a change and you don't like it just tap undo or cancel the whole thing and revert to the original now if you tap on adjust the first thing that you'll see is a magic wand icon this is auto adjust your iPhone will use AI to make what it thinks are the best edits to your photo you can use this as a quick fix or as a starting point before jumping into more specific tweaks if you tap into it again the changes are removed so you can toggle this on and off to see what you prefer below that you've got all the manual editing options each one has a slider underneath for example if you tap on exposure you can move the slider to the right to increase exposure or to the left to reduce it once you let go that setting is saved and you can scroll through to the next one brilliance

12:20 highlights shadows contrast brightness black point saturation vibrance warmth tint sharpness definition noise reduction and vignette so yeah there is a lot to play with here if you want to really fine-tune your images while you're in this section it is also worth checking out the menu icon in the top right corner let's say that you've just edited a photo that was taken as part of a set like a burst of shots or photos all captured at the same location if you want to apply those same changes to the rest of them you don't have to start from scratch tap that menu choose copy edits and then choose whether you want to copy the style the adjustments or use the adaptive option where your phone uses a bit of AI to intelligently apply those edits to other photos then just go

13:07 to another image tap the same menu and choose paste edits it's a really good timesaver now back in the main editing screen let's look at crop most of your crop tools are up at the top you might see an auto button tap this and your phone will try to crop the image in what it thinks is the most visually appealing way doesn't always appear and when it does the results can be a bit hit or miss personally I prefer cropping manually to the left of that you've got a flip button to mirror the image horizontally and next to that is the rotate button on the far right next to the pen icon which is for markup by the way you'll see a symbol that looks like a square with a few rectangles that's your crop ratio button by default cropping is set to free form meaning that you can crop however you like but if you'd rather work with proper

13:53 photographic ratios like 4x3 or 16x9 you can tap this button and pick from the list that appears at the bottom you can also choose whether you want the crop to be in portrait or landscape mode now depending on your device you might also see a cleanup option this is part of Apple intelligence so it only shows up on phones that support those features if you do see it you can tap cleanup and your iPhone will scan the image for things that it thinks you might want to remove from the background you can then use your finger to highlight those areas or just tap on anything that the phone automatically detects it will then try to remove those objects using AI like a lot of Apple intelligence features it is very hit and miss it tends to work best when the object is sitting against a fairly uniform background like a person

14:38 walking on a beach or a toy in a grassy field when you're done editing you can tap done in the top right corner to save everything or hit cancel in the top left to discard your changes and go back to the original okay so that was how we edit a photo now let's take a look at editing video the good news is that the process is pretty much exactly the same start by finding the video that you want to edit and then tap the same edit button down at the bottom of the screen from here much of what you see will look very familiar if I tap on adjust for example you'll see that most of the same visual settings are available here as we had when editing a photo you can scroll through and use the sliders to make any changes that you want adjusting things like brightness contrast exposure vibrance and so on you can also tap the

15:25 magic wand here just like with photos tap it once to let your phone make AI powered improvements to the overall video you can use that as a quick fix or just as a starting point before going into the manual tools to the right of that you've got the filters button it works a bit like styles on the photo side you can scroll through and apply different looks to your video it's nice and easy to experiment with if you want to give your video a specific tone or vibe then there's the crop tool and this is actually really handy because one of the most common things that people want to do with video is fix the orientation maybe you filmed something thinking that your phone was in landscape mode only to realize later that it was recorded in portrait if that happens come into the crop section and use the rotate button at the top to fix it you've also got

16:10 transform options along the bottom to help fine-tune the framing the main difference between editing photos and editing videos comes down to the video timeline itself this is where you can trim the clip now I'll be honest trimming has always felt a bit fiddly in the Photos app i was hoping Apple would improve it with this update but it still takes a bit of practice so here's how it works you can swipe along the video strip at the bottom to move the playhead that's just for previewing not trimming if you want to trim the video you need to use the handles on either side of the yellow bar drag from the left to set your new starting point drag from the right to trim the end once you've adjusted those the area inside the yellow bar is what will be saved and anything outside of it those darker blacked out areas will be cut from the

16:57 video if you want to mute the audio you can tap the speaker icon in the top left and if you tap the little time icon in the top center you'll get the option to adjust playback speed so let's say you shot this clip at 60 frames pers you can use that time option to slow it down to 30 frames pers which gives you a smooth slow motion effect without losing quality then finally up in the top right menu you've got the same options that you had with photos you can copy edits paste them to other videos and you can also save the edited version as a duplicate just in case you want to keep the original all right let's finish off this part of the video by heading back to the main library view and just looking at one final thing that we haven't touched on yet and that's the menu button in the bottom right corner now earlier I mentioned the select

17:42 button at the top of your screen once you've tapped that you can select multiple photos or videos at once and when you've done that this menu button in the bottom right gives you a bunch of extra actions that you can apply to all of the items in one go you can use it to add everything that you've selected to your favorites you can duplicate them you can copy them and paste them elsewhere or you can hide them which does exactly what it sounds like it removes those photos or videos from the main part of your library and puts them into a hidden album that album is protected by Face ID Touch ID or your device passcode so if there's anything that you don't want someone stumbling across if they've got your phone in their hands this is a really helpful feature you can also add your selected items to an album and when you do that you'll see a plus button in the top

18:29 right corner that lets you create a brand new album right there on the spot there's also the option to adjust the date time and location data attached to your images you can even choose to remove the location completely which is really handy if you're planning to share the image but you don't want to include that kind of metadata speaking of sharing if you do press the share icon in the bottom left corner of an image you'll see an options button at the top of that screen tap into that and you'll get a few more controls including the ability to include or exclude location data from this photo when you send it it's a great way to keep that info private without permanently stripping it from the photo itself so with the library section of the photos app now covered let's explore some of the other areas just a quick heads up your photos

19:14 app might look a little different to mine i've reset mine to its default layout but if you've customized yours that would explain why the layout on your screen doesn't exactly match what you're seeing here at the top you'll see a section called recent days you can scroll through this to see a timeline of your most recent photos and videos grouped by day or if you want a broader view you can tap the recent days heading and see them all in a grid it's exactly what it sounds like your photos and videos neatly grouped by the day that they were taken i really like this feature and I always keep it switched on it's great for moments like sitting at my desk on a Monday morning and quickly scrolling through what my wife and I got up to with the kids over the weekend it's a smart way of letting your phone automatically organize your images into little day-by-day albums without you

20:00 needing to do anything just below that you've got people and pets this is where your iPhone will try to group together photos based on faces that it recognizes and it's really good at it your iPhone will often prompt you to confirm who someone is but you can do it manually too if you go back into your library tap on an image then tap the info button at the bottom you'll see any detected faces in that photo tap on one and you can name the person from there your iPhone will create a dedicated people album for them the example I'm using here is a stock photo but on my personal phone this feature works really well in fact it is scary how accurate this is my iPhone can even tell the difference between our twins from when they were just a few months old below that you've got pinned collections tap modify on the

20:45 right hand side and you'll see a list of options that you can choose to pin that might be your selfies your hidden album recently deleted or anything else in this section use the green tick boxes to add the items use the red minus icons to remove them and drag things up or down to reorder the list underneath that is memories now there is a feature here exclusive to devices that support Apple Intelligence if you see the Apple Intelligence icon and a prompt that says "Describe a memory," then that's your cue just type in something in plain language like our holiday to Turkey last year or beach trips over the years and your phone will create a memory movie for you it's actually quite good at coming up with something meaningful and it's a fun way to relive old moments next is trips i don't get to use this as much these days thanks to having two

21:31 toddlers and a lot less travel time but this feature is designed to automatically detect if you've taken a trip based on the location and frequency of your photos when my wife and I went on honeymoon back in 2022 the photos app automatically created a trip album for us from that time for example then there's featured photos this is where your phone will highlight pictures that it thinks are particularly good and surface them for you it's a nice way to rediscover images that you might have forgotten about after that we've got two of the most useful sections media types and utilities if you tap into media types you'll see your entire photo library broken down into categories like live photos panoramas bursts screenshots screen recordings all neatly stored so you can find what you're after in

22:16 seconds in utilities you get access to things like your favorites your hidden album recently deleted and even duplicates but there are also some really clever options here like receipts handwritten notes illustrations and images that contain QR codes your iPhone automatically detects all of these and files them away for you you don't have to do anything below utilities you've got albums this one's pretty straightforward tap into it to see your custom albums you can also create a new one using the create button in the top right corner and start adding photos straight away below that is shared albums these work the same way except when you create the album you'll also choose a participant once someone's added they can view and add content to the shared album as well my wife and I

23:03 use this all the time but I've also set up a shared album with my sister and parents so they can keep up with photos and videos of the kids it's a super easy way to share new memories without constantly bombarding the family group chat right at the bottom you'll see wallpaper suggestions this is where your phone analyzes your library and recommends images that it thinks would make good wallpapers and to be fair it's usually right aside from one or two all of the suggestions here are photos that I've taken myself and I would say most of them would look great as a wallpaper and finally we've got the customize and reorder button that we talked about earlier this is where you can go back in and change what shows up in this lower section of the app including the order and visibility of everything that we've just looked at so the last thing to talk about is search and honestly this part

23:49 of the photos app has seen some pretty major improvements over the years especially in the most recent version now Apple does get a fair bit of criticism for how slowly Apple intelligence seems to be rolling out but if we're just talking about machine learning the kind of AI that's been built into your iPhone for years they've actually been doing some really clever things and search inside the photos app is a perfect example of that so whether you're in your library view or that default view when you first open the app you'll see a little blue magnifying glass icon at the top that's your search button tap on it and you can start typing straight away the idea here is that you don't need to use tags or sort through folders you just use natural language so instead of trying to remember how something was saved just type in exactly what you're looking for

24:34 that might be a specific person it might be a holiday or trip you took it could even be something like red car or birthday cake just type it in and the app will try to find what you're after once you start typing you'll see a list of results appear with little icons next to them now Apple doesn't really explain what these icons mean but most of them are fairly self-explanatory if you see a pin with a circle under it that's telling you the results are based on location if there's a black square with some lines behind it that means that the photos came from an album and if you see a kind of square with lines in the middle that means that it's found your search term in some visible text inside the image but it doesn't stop there your phone can also identify sounds in videos it can recognize faces and it can even identify all kinds of everyday objects

25:21 like specific foods type of cars plants animals you name it so my advice here is just play around with it try out different search terms and see what comes up you'll probably be surprised at just how good the Photos app is at finding exactly what you're looking for so there you go well done if you made it all the way to the end of this video this one was definitely on the longer side but then again the Photos app is a pretty big app once you start scratching below the surface like I said at the start I totally get why people have frustrations with the redesign but honestly I think once you understand a handful of key features and take a few minutes to customize the app to the way you like it it actually becomes a pretty solid app what do you think any tips or tricks of your own that you use in the Photos app drop me a comment and let me know i'd love to hear what's working for

26:07 you and as ever if you found this video useful do please consider leaving me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future see you on the next video