The iOS 26 Photos App Is More Powerful Than You Thought | A Complete Guide

0:00 So, were you aware that you can turn any old photo with a subject into this 3dish like spatial scene? Or the fact that you have a Face ID protected, hidden, and recently deleted folder? These are all things that are now back in the revitalized iOS and iPad OS 26 application because we all know that the changes Apple made with iOS 18, you know, let's say they learned from their mistakes and they brought back all the good and some even better things to the new version of iOS and iPad OS 26. So, this is everything you need to know about the Photos app, a complete walkthrough, how to use it from the basics all the way to the nitty-gritty, and of course, all the new things that are coming with iOS 26. So, strap in. Let's learn all things about this awesome photos application, cuz you might be surprised. Let's get into it. But now before we continue, if you enjoy

0:46 walkthroughs and tutorials like this one of specific native Apple applications, definitely consider subscribing to the channel because we have more of these coming down the pipeline, especially as the new iOS and iPad OS 26 updates are going to be available to the public in the next 2 weeks or so. So without further ado, now let's jump into the first piece, which has to be some of the new stuff with iOS 26. Well, let's just hop in and see what's new with the photos app in iOS 26. If you guys remember with iOS 18, Apple tried to revamp everything and they kind of messed it up in my opinion. But let's first go over the new quote unquote liquid glass design that's been taking over the entire operating system. So here in the photos application, you see some instances of it. Of course, up here in the layout when you filtering the select button, you can see that there is some liquid glassiness. And if I move

1:33 this, you can see that the background of the buttons do change based on the background that's behind it. You also have a little bit of the liquid glassiness down here. If you tap in here, the liquid glass also goes into down here. And they have different opacity levels. Like for instance, this one has a little bit more blur down here versus up here. You can barely tell there's something there from a readability standpoint. But that's how you get some more information. All your navigation buttons are there as well. You have your new button here, which I'm going to touch on in the future of this video. But overall, Liquid Glass, you know, it's here. So, you either like it, you hate it, you're going to get used to it. And Apple throughout the whole beta program has been tweaking just how much opacity there is overall. But at this point, I did get used to it. I've been using it for about 2 months now since the original beta 1 release, and it does

2:18 grow on you over time. But now, let's get into what's functionally different. Because again, with iOS 18, like I mentioned, they completely changed how the photos library worked, and it was a little bit convoluted and complicated. They added a ton of different things down below, which made it very, very annoying to use. So now what I like about it is if I do quit out of this and you open up the photos up from scratch, this is now what you're greeted with. It is very simple and we're now back to how it used to be, but again with a few added touches. So the main thing that you got to learn here with iOS 26 is a two and three navigation buttons. So you have your library, which is basically all your most recent library photos taken. You have your collection section, which does kind of mimic what iOS 18 had underneath your photo library. So, I do like how they're now split up into different sections into different categories, into different albums down

3:05 here. And then, of course, you have your search button down here on the bottom right hand corner, which lets you do some recent searches, but then also search with some Apple intelligence behind it as well to help you find out what you're looking for. And then you can just go here, press the X button, and you're back to your library. You also have some new filtering options. So, if I tap on these right here, you do have the ability to filter based on a few different things. So you can sort by recently added, sort by date captured, or you can also go into your filtering messages here and filter all the different photos based on your favorites, your edited, your photos, videos, screenshots, shared with you, not in any album. You can click on here again, go to your view options. You can also zoom in, zoom out, go based on aspect ratio, or change that up. So if I want to change it, I can do that, but I don't really like to do that. And then also you have the ability to remove screenshots and shared with you from your main photo library because I know

3:52 some people they take screenshots all the time and they don't want it bombarding your photo library. So you can just remove them and then also your shared with you well albeit you do have a shared album when it is shared with you. You can remove them from your main photo library here to keep that the way it is. And then lastly you do have your select button up here which works the same way. You tap on here you can select these. You have your share button, your trash button. You have your ellipses up here which lets you kind of do a little bit more here like your copy, add to favorites, duplicate, but all that stuff functionally is still relatively the same. It just looks a little bit different because the layout is different. A and then B, like I said, we do have that liquid glass design now. All right. So, now that we know how to navigate this main screen, which is what people have been used to in the past, and we're kind of revamping back to where we were with iOS 17. The next bread and butter or the next piece is

4:37 going to be in this collections tab. So, this is where everything else lives. Like I mentioned earlier, everything is broken up by default, similar to how it was broken up last time, and you can just reorder this, and I'll show you how in a second. But most of the things you need to know are going to be in the three dots or the ellipses. So, if you tap on here, you have a bunch of new options. First and foremost is going to be the original view. So, as you can see, we're in this top view where the main memories are a little bit larger than the rest. But, if I go in here, tap on this one, it evens everything out, making everything a little bit more visible, a little bit more spaced out. So you're able to then tap in and see more on the screen. You can also enlarge it. So if I tap on here, press this, you can make them all a little bit bigger to fit less on the screen, but also get a better view on each one of these albums or pinned, you know, photos or whatever the case is. And then right now it's under the show all category, everything

5:23 is visible. So if I keep scrolling, you can see that things are visible and they're very easy to see. If I tap on here, collapse all, now it turns into a collapsible list, which you can then tap into individually. So, if I tap on here, then it'll open it up. You can edit it from here. You can just close it again. I can click on here if I want to. The pin ones only has edit because you can unpin them if you want to and then reorder them as you see fit. And then lastly, if I tap on here, let's show all again. Tap on reorder. This is where you can then reorder exactly what you want to see. So maybe, for instance, you want to have your pinned all the way at the top. Or maybe you want to see your recent trips. You tap on this, bring it all the way to top, and it works very easily. You just hold here, hold the little hamburger, move it around, and you can see that it moves around here. So, we'll go on trips, we'll tap there, and now you can see that underneath my albums is where you see trips moving

6:10 forward. So, this is going to be very easy and very helpful for you to kind of organize how you want your collections to be shown moving forward. So, whether you want to have just a collapsible list, hide everything, show everything, it's very easy to see here. And then, of course, you have your media types and your utilities down here, which we'll touch on in a second. All right, so now let's get into the anatomy of a photo. So, let's crop into one of these photos here. This is one that we took with my buddy Patrick. Shout out to him. You know, he's an awesome tech YouTuber as well, if you guys don't know who he is. But, let's go into the first new thing that we notice, which is going to be this hexagonal button. It is a tiny little button. I don't know why Apple made it so small, but what I like about this is that it turns any photo and gives it this parallax 3D spatial effect. So, again, it'll take any photo, new or old, taken with your iPhone or not. You tap on here, it's going to do

6:56 this kind of like highlighted spatial scene situation. And then if I move the phone, you can see that the background moves around, but the subject stay in place, giving this kind of like look, which I absolutely love. I think this is such a cool way to use AI and spatial scenes. I'm going to do it on this one also as well, so you guys can take a look. So, if I tap on here, click on that, it'll give you a highlighted version. It'll do the spatial scene. It'll kind of crop in a little bit but bring you to the foreground which I think is such a cool way or use case for the spatial scenes. Let's do one more example here. So for instance, we have this one. We'll press on the spatial scene, it'll highlight it with the Apple Intelligence Rainbow. And then if I grab this, and you can see that if I move it around, the center stays where it is, but the background does move around, giving it this parallax effect, which I think is very cool. Now, in terms of

7:42 which iPhones can use it, like I said, it could be any photo, new or old, taken by an iPhone or not, and you need to have an iPhone 12 or newer. So, it doesn't need to really be an Apple Intelligence Ready phone because again, the iPhone 12 is not an Apple intelligence phone, but it's able to do this, which is very cool to see. So, I highly recommend playing around with this and seeing what it's like with all your different photos. The better the subject is separated from the background in reality with the photo, the better the parallax effect will be, but it'll do it to pretty much anything that has a subject. And then another cool thing about that is that you can also use it as a log screen wallpaper when you are customizing it. It'll actually suggest some when you are customizing a brand new lock screen in iOS 26. But now to continue on with the anatomy or the data that you get from each one of these photos. If you swipe up, you can actually get some more information on all the photos that you're doing. So as you can see, you get the date when it's

8:28 taken, the actual file name. So if you do import it into your computer or whatever the case is, you can do that. You can see that the camera that it was taken on. You can see the format. So H EIF. You can see that it is also using kind of that spatial feature right now to be able to kind of separate the foreground and the background by changing the f-stop. Then you get a little bit more granular. You got the main camera. We use a 24mm with the f-stop 1.78. You have the 24 megapixel camera, the resolution, how big of a file it is. You get the ISO information. Everything that you would need to know is going to be in here. You also get the location data, which is cool. So you can see that it was taken in Hudson Yards. You can adjust that as well if you want to. So if I tap adjust, you can actually kind of predetermine where this is taken. And then also you can press adjust here to change the date that it was taken if that's something that you want to do to change the metadata a

9:13 little bit. But that is going to be the anatomy of a photo. And it gets a little bit better once you start getting photos with some real information on it, which I want to show you next. So now this is where things get interesting when it comes to the anatomy of a photo. So let's say you're at a big sporting event or a big concert and you want to get more information on it. Maybe you forgot where it was or something like that. Normally the metadata of course it'll show up down here. It'll give you all the information you get here. But one cool thing about iOS 26 is that it, as you can see here, it was able to recognize what concert it was and who it is based on the location, the date, the time, and everything that comes with it. Because again, this is going to work mostly for much larger kind of venues and big events. This isn't going to really work for local events, at least not yet, especially out of the box. But what's really cool about this is that it was able to locate that yes, I wasn't

10:00 Metlife Stadium. I went to an Ed Sheeran concert. And if I tap on here, you get all this cool information like, hey, this is Ed Sheeran from the artist. You can open an Apple Music. You get further details of when this was, where it was, at what time it was. You get the venue location, the venue information, and then you get even more Apple Music stuff showing up here, like his top songs. So, I think this is actually really, really cool. And not only that, it gives you upcoming events and lets you also use Shazam on here if you want to. So overall, I think this is a really, really cool kind of way to kind of relive some moments. Now, again, it's not always going to work. So, for instance, I believe this was also at Metife Stadium. If I go up, this was at a soccer game at Metife Stadium. I believe some Copa World Cup or something like that. But again, you can see that the event wasn't big enough for Apple to

10:46 recognize it. And this is just recognized as a normal photo that was taken at Metife. So, again, your mileage is going to vary depending on what event you go to and things like that. But, I still think it's a very cool feature. So, to continue on with these Apple intelligence features, we got to talk about live text in the photos application. So, if you ever have something like this, like an invitation or something that does have a lot of text, you will automatically get this little icon pop up. Again, if I press this, it'll go away. If I tap on here, it'll recognize that. And if you tap on here, it'll then highlight everything that it sees. So, for instance, it does see a date. I can tap on here and actually add it to my calendar very quickly with all the information that's needed. I can also tap in here to get more information. So, if I long press on this, I can actually add it to my calendar that way. And then it tells you all the information that's going to be added as well. And then, of course, you

11:31 can just highlight whatever text there is and treat it like normal text. So, I can highlight this. I can translate it if I want to. I can copy paste it. I can add it to whatever other pieces of data I want to. I can add it to my notes. So, all that is great when it comes from a live text category standpoint. It's very easy to use. And then, of course, the camera app itself is also a QR code reader. So, if you do have a QR code in an image that you have or if you can actually just see a QR code with the camera application, you can highlight it, tap into it, and you'll be good to go. And then lastly, you do have the live translation feature in here, which is cool to see. This thinks it's in a different language. It kind of is. It's just a name in a different language, but if you tap on here, it'll try to auto translate. You press on here, the translate option does come up. You tap on here, and then the translation is overlaid. Of course, this is already in English, and this is a pronoun, so it's a name. It's not technically in a different language, but the iPhone does

12:18 think it's in a different language. And this is what the UI is going to look like when you are live translating something from an image, which is great to see. And then a couple other things which are good in the collection section. This is one of probably my most used sections. You have the media types and then the utilities as well. And we've added more utilities with this new iOS 26 version. So things that have QR codes. If I tap on here, these are all the things that have different QR codes that I've scanned in the past, which is cool to see. And then you have your duplicates, your illustrating, your handwriting, your receipts, your favorites, and then you have two locked folders that are locked with Face ID. So you have your deleted folder, which again you can just open up to view the album and then delete all after that. And then you have a hidden folder. You actually have the ability to add photos into the hidden folder. They are removed from your actual recent library or your

13:03 normal library down here and only added to the recent folder. You also have your media types like I mentioned, your videos, your panoramas, your time-lapse, and your screenshots, which is awesome. And those are just some of the smaller things that I also wanted to share in the photos application. And the final thing I do want to show off is going to be the type to create memory. So I can go in here and it gives you some kind of predetermined prompts of what it thinks it can do. So maybe we can do um chasing waves with a happy song. So it basically compiles all the photos using Apple intelligence that maybe I was at a beach or with my daughter or whatever the case is and then creates a again a memory for you to have on there. So it adds some music. You can go through the photos if you want to. It'll kind of go through all the ocean stuff and beat stuff because it makes sense by the water. So, all things are really cool and I actually really like Apple's memories

13:49 because they're just easy to use. They make sense and they're just a good way to kind of relive some memories that you've had in the past, which is something that I tend to do more and more often as somebody who is now a father of soon to be two. But that's everything in the photos application. Let me know in the comment down below what you think. Do you like the restructure of how they kind of went back to what iOS 17 looked like by also keeping some of the iOS 18 stuff but making it just much better with iOS 26? Always curious to know. But now you should know everything about the Apple's Photos app. Let's finish up the video. So that will just about do for this video everybody. As you saw, Apple went back to their bread and butter with iOS 17 because iOS 18 was a little bit of a miss. They tried to simplify it, but they ended up overcomplicating it a little bit. and iOS 26 just brings all that beautiful simplicity back with all the new added features that come with

14:35 the liquid glass effect that come with all of the things Apple Intelligence brings. So overall, the photos application is now, of course, it's going to be a place and a home for all your photos and videos that you take on a daily basis. But it's also become somewhat of a tool. It's a QR code scanner. You can save text. There's live text readings. There's live translations. There's some subject recognition in terms of what you're looking at, whether it's a person, a place, a pet. So, there's a bunch of awesome stuff in the Apple's photos application that I think goes overlooked. And I'm glad you guys made it to the very end of this video and learned a thing or two. So, leave a comment down below what your favorite piece of the photos application is. Do you use it as just a place to store your photos or do you use it as a little bit more to use it as again a tool to better your day-to-day? But that'll do it everybody. If you made it to the end, leave a dolphin in the comments down below so I know you made it to the end. And if you want to watch more videos like this one, definitely stay tuned

15:21 because we got a bunch more coming down the pipeline with all these new iPhones coming out. Until next time. Peace everyone. [Music]