make photos app like before

Hi Lee,
Unfortunately it didn't work for me. My photos are exactly the same, with the oldest at the top. I tried sorting by recently added and date captured but nothing worked. I tried opening and closing the photos app in the app switcher and then reopening it again but still the same. Thanks for the info though. It was worth a try.

I never spend very long in the photos app but it is useful to be able to turn off some of the rubbish that's put in there so the tip above was useful.

If I go to Library then it seems to show me photos for the last few months with oldest first.

If I select a media type, or album or anything from utilities then it does seem to put the newest ones first. There is a Recently Saved link in utilities which may do the trick. It had a lot in it, possibly everything.

Curiously there is a mysterious hidden album under utilities that needs my face to unlock but has nothing in it.

Subject line says it all. I wonder how far back the 'recently saved' thing takes you though. I want my photos like before, the most recent at the top, and going backwards in descending order through all my photos, not just from the last few months. I don't have many photos but still. For my user preferences, this is the worst thing Apple have done on the iPhone.

The hidden album is literally that. You can choose to put photos in there that you don’t want in your main library and that require extra security to view.
Similar idea to the hidden apps feature.

OK that's actually a really neat feature - I never knew something like that existed. Thanks for the info.

Maybe not quite as exciting as my conspiracy theory brain had come up with, but a genuinely useful feature.

And @Tara - I don't disagree with you, it was a much better app before. When I go to recently saved it says I have 1,300 ish which sounds like it might be everything.

The original post suggested using media types but I find that is not great - I get videos, live photos, screenshots etc but if I add these up they come to a lot less. I don't think any photos I take with my Meta Ray-bans are counting here.

I hope there isn't going to be a trend of apps that presume that with AI they know better than what we do about how we use an app.

Not exactly how it used to be earlier, but one way to have all photos in a sequence is to first double tap the Library button, then, from the bottom, start swiping towards left to find all the photos in the new to old sequence. Slide the scroll bar at the bottom down to 100 per cent before swiping leftward.

My question to all of you is this: Has the Photos app redesign made it any easier for blind people to locate specific photos in their library?

I know we're all struggling just to get the same interface we once had. But that's more of a someone-rearranged-the-furniture issue. Set that aside for a moment, and instead consider whether any of the recent changes have made it easier to locate a photo.

In my recollection, the only Apple innovation that genuinely helped me use the Photos app was image descriptions. As a blind person, I use Photos rarely and only have a handful on my phone. Yet image descriptions is enough to help me identify each one.

I'll tell you what I could really use help with. Suppose I attend a large group event, and someone uses my phone to take a group photo with me in the picture. I'd really love some automated way to get a list of the names of everyone in the photo. The only way I can do that is to rely on someone sighted.

So, if there's anything new in the Photos app that's actually useful to a blind person, let me know what it is.

At tripolice, yes, this works, this is what I was doing, but I didn't like this method really. At Mr Grieves, I tried the 'recently saved' thing under Utilities, but I have 7 photos altogether in my library, but when I go to the 'recently saved' option, there are only six. I have no idea why this is, particularly when most of the photos from a specific period are there, there is only one that isn't. At Paul, There is a caption option, but if you add a caption, it won't be read out by VoiceOver when you're flicking through your photos in the library. I really needed to label a photo last year sometime, so I ended up looking online,and the below method worked. Open the photo you want to label, go to edit, then markup, then add. Then double tap on an option called 'description'. An edit field will come up. Here you can write a label. Then keep hitting the 'done' buttons until you're back in the library. I had to hit 'done' three times. This won't change the filename, it'll just add a description to the photo. I don't know if the name will be there if you send it to another iPhone user.

No. None of the changes have made it easier to find photos on an iPhone, with the exception of image description. The Apple way of preventing an easy change of photo file names is one of the problems, and that is not going to change.
I have many photos on my phone, and the image description and that I've put them in labeled albums are the only ways I have to figure out what they are. Now it is more difficult to go through the albums.
On my computer, which has a non-Apple OS, I have my photos arranged with file names and in folders, and I can easily navigate them entirely with the arrow, backspace and enter keys. However, there is no easy, instant image description, so I mainly start the photo on the phone and move it to my computer, renaming the file in the process, which is about the same process of renaming the picture on my phone by sharing it to Files and renaming it. *Sigh* I'm used to the Rube Goldberg machine way of doing things.

Find the photo you want, doubel tap and hold with two fingers, type the label you want into the edit box, then tap done.

Hi,
Yep that works too, but is it consistent with photos? I tried it today on a photo, and the label stayed at least. I opened and closed the app, restarted VoiceOver and the label was still there. But in the past, I had a lot of issues labelling apps on the home screen. I wanted to make their names more descriptive, because I've got two authenticator apps on my phone both called 'Authenticator', but when I relabelled them with VoiceOver's element label feature, the new labels would be there for a few days, then they'd disappear randomly. So in case this isn't consistent and your labels just randomly disappear, try my method above. This method, my method above works for giving a photo a name, rather like a label, and not an actual automatic image description. Open the photo you want to label, go to edit, then markup, then add. Then double tap on an option called 'description'. An edit field will come up. Here you can write a label, for example, 'houses of parliament'. Then keep hitting the 'done' buttons until you're back in the library. I had to hit 'done' three times. When you navigate through your photos again, you'll hear 'photo, houses of parliament'. This won't change the filename, it'll just add a description to the photo. I don't know if the name will be there if you send it to another iPhone user. But as for actually putting photos onto another operating system, yeah, that's the tricky one, because the filename doesn't change, it's just a description you've added when the photograph is in your library.

Does anyone know if there is a way to label videos in the photos app as well? I'm starting a Youtube channel, so it would be great to be able to tell which video in my library is which without having to play them.

If I remember, the description option is not on the video's menu gobbledygook, as described for the photos. You could try moving it to the Files app, renaming it, then moving it back to Photos.

I have some sort of aversion toward using the labeling function, especially for files. It's a need for there to be metadata attached to the file through all the ping pong I do between different OS and devices.

Thank you for this idea. I'll play around with it and see if I can figure something out. So far I've been air dropping videos to my Mac where I can label them easily and organize them in folders. Or if I need to do some editing, I upload them to iMovie and can label them there. But it would be so nice to be able to label them in the photos app too. Also, gobbledygook was an excellent word choice! Thanks for making me smile.

I'm sure this is not limited to just us blind users; even sighted people don't like the new Photos app.
TBH I think iOS 12 had the best Photos app. The user experience of the Photos app seems to have gone downhill since iOS 13 or so. I remember back in iOS 12 it used to be possible to bulk-select photos based on date taken with VO.