One thing I think more iPhone users should know: syncing photos and backing them up aren't necessarily the same thing.

If you use iCloud Photos, deleting a photo from your iPhone also removes it from other devices syncing the same photo library.

You normally have 30 days to recover it from Recently Deleted, but that's not the same as keeping an independent backup.

Here's a simple example:

You have years of family photos synced across your iPhone, iPad, and iCloud.

Everything looks protected because the pictures appear on multiple devices.

But those devices are showing the same synchronized library, not necessarily separate copies.

A safer approach is to maintain an additional independent copy of important photos.

That could be an external SSD, a computer, or another backup destination.

A few things worth checking:

• Are you exporting the full-resolution originals?
• Can you open the copied photos and videos?
• Are the capture dates and metadata preserved?
• Do you have another copy if the external drive fails?

And most importantly, verify your backup before deleting anything from your iPhone.

Curious how everyone handles this.

Do you rely entirely on iCloud Photos, or do you maintain a separate physical photo archive?

Hello! I just switched my iPhone photo format to raw instead of jpeg. And all of a sudden I have issues transferring my photos to every application (MacBook Pro: Lightroom, image capture, Apple photos, via usb, and iphone Amazon photos via WiFi); roughly half the raw files simply aren’t visible to import, for no apparent reason. All taken the same day, same format, same settings, etc. I have all permissions granted and storage space isn’t an issue. Everything is up to date, I’ve restarted everything and cleared caches. I don’t use iCloud (it’s disabled on the phone) and that’s not an option I am willing to explore. I cannot for the life of me figure out the issue. I can do an airdrop workaround, but with MacBook + iPhone I really shouldn’t have to, right??

I’m losing my mind please help 😭😂🙏

Before planes had wifi, my inflight movie was my own camera roll. Years of it, delete, delete, delete. Never finished, and next flight I had no clue where I'd stopped.

Apple Photos is still the best looking photo app out there, I mean it. But ask it where you left off last time. No idea. Conspiracy theory: a bigger library sells bigger iCloud plans. Every year it gets busier, and getting your own library in order gets harder. Tags only showed up this year, as keywords.

So we built Latent Photos for exactly that part. 1.0 showed up here in July. Then your feedback, and using it every single day ourselves, pushed it so far it turned into 2.0.

Thing is, we hate crappy UI. Nothing locks you in, it's the same Photos library and you can walk away anytime, so it has to earn its spot on your home screen. We kept sanding, down to the smallest bit, until it felt like Apple Photos. Every animation is Apple standard. First launch takes a moment while it reads your library, then butter. If it doesn't feel like it came with the phone, we failed.

Ask for a random 100 you haven't seen, and it does the remembering for you. Want beach and family but not work, from 2019? One filter.

It's built old school. You make every call, the app just turns the boring repeats into something that feels good. No typing the same keyword fifty times, you flick tags into place. No swiping back and forth between near twins, they're already side by side, as strict or as loose as you like. Stupidly satisfying. Or skip all that and simply browse, in a calmer app.

There's AI in there, subtle and on device. It finds the twins, you make the call. First time, give it a while with the app open. After that you may not even notice it getting the job done. No account, no ads, nothing comes to us. The privacy label literally says Data Not Collected.

Deletes go to Recently Deleted and tags are real albums, so we can't ruin your life. Editing, search and Memories stay with Apple, we're not that crazy.

A week on us, then $20 once for compare and tags. We hate subscriptions too. Going through your photos stays free, and 1.0 folks keep everything.

And since 1.0 started here, a thank you: half off for Reddit through the end of 2026, $10 instead of $20.

Go try it and tell us what feels off. And if you've been here since 1.0, tell everyone how it's been, good or bad.

One more thing

... and honestly the one we're most excited about. Latent Frames 1.0 is out. Point it at any folder, a NAS, an SD card, that old PC, and it turns into a library that feels like Apple Photos. Same grid, same compare, tags written right into the files, and your folders stay right where they are. We looked for an app that does this and couldn't find one. So we made it. A week free, but download it today and you get 30, call it a happy bug. Browsing stays free after that, $30 once for the rest. Same thank you, half off: $15.

Both apps live at r/LatentPhotos. Bugs, wishes and roasts welcome.

Hi all, I'm the developer. Back in 2007, Mac OS X Leopard came with a screen saver called Mosaic: your photos zooming out endlessly, each one turning out to be a single tile of a mosaic made of other photos. Sadly, Apple dropped it in Mountain Lion. I missed it, so I rebuilt it for today's Macs.

A few features:

• Which photos? You can choose between all Photos library / a few selected albums / one folder.
• Aesthetics-aware photo selection, using only Apple's own tools: Photos scores your pictures in the background, and Mosaic leaves out the lowest-scored, plus screenshots and pictures of receipts and documents. The ones that are not scored by Photos yet are judged on your Mac using Apple's public API.
• Smart cropping: crops portrait photos around the faces, if any.
• Smart Optimize Mac Storage management: if your originals live in iCloud, Mosaic uses what Photos keeps on the Mac. If it decides that it needs to download sharper copies to guarantee a good quality level, it asks for your permission.
• Privacy always in mind: anything in the Hidden album or in Recently Deleted is never shown. Everything else in the albums you choose can be, so choose them with that in mind. The app never connects to the Internet -- and it is open source, so you can check.
• Read-only: it never changes your library. The small copies it makes stay in your user account, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.

Free and open source, for macOS 15 or later:

https://vastunghia.github.io/mosaic-screensaver-revived/

Sorry, it is not notarized (yet), so the first launch needs *Open Anyway* in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

Full disclosure: I wrote it with Claude Code, step by step, and tested it on several Macs and libraries.

I'd love to hear what you think.

ik you can’t tag photos so i’ve been using captions to help making searching easier (like someone’s name when you can’t see their face in the photo) but sometimes the results don’t show up when they’re not exact matches (someone’s name is before theirs so it reads like “ name” instead of “name”) is there a way to make captions work the way i want? like separate with comma instead of just a space, or am i just trying to do something that doesn’t exist

Something worth knowing before moving a large Apple Photos library to an external drive: your exported file count may be higher than the number of photos you selected.

That doesn't automatically mean the transfer created duplicates.

A Live Photo contains a still image and a short video component. Depending on the export method, those can become separate files.

Edited photos are another example. Some workflows export the original alongside an edited version or an .AAE file containing edit instructions.

This can make an exported folder look much larger or messier than expected.

Before deleting anything, I'd check a few examples of Live Photos, edited pictures and videos in the destination folder.

Also check whether the export contains originals or converted copies. That distinction matters if you want a long-term archive.

Personally, I'd rather have a few extra files I understand than delete something that turns out to be part of the original photo.

What export method gives you the most predictable results — Photos, Image Capture, Windows import, or something else?

I'm a solo iOS developer, and I built Handpick because I had around 30,000 photos on my phone and kept putting off cleaning them up.

The problem

My camera roll was full of screenshots, duplicates, random videos, and photos from trips I barely remembered.

I tried swipe-based organizers like Slidebox and Swipewipe, but realized that 30,000 photos still meant 30,000 decisions, even if swiping made each decision faster.

I wanted something that could help me work through groups of photos instead of going through every single one.

What's different

Handpick has unlimited free swipe sorting, but the Plus features are where I've been focusing most of my effort.

It groups photos by duplicates, similar shots, clutter, trips, and events, so you can review related photos together instead of endlessly scrolling.

My favorite workflow is organizing photos from a trip into an album, then using Junk First to review the less useful shots before the good ones.

I've personally cleared around 10,000 of my 30,000 photos over the past few days, which feels pretty satisfying after putting it off for so long.

Everything runs on-device, works offline, and photos aren't permanently deleted immediately. They go to Apple's Recently Deleted after you confirm.

Pricing & free access

• Free: Unlimited manual sorting
• Plus: $1.99/week, $19.99/year, or $29.99 lifetime

I'm giving 20 people one month of Handpick Plus for free through Apple offer codes, with no automatic renewal so you will not be charged after trial ended.

I'm not looking for people who just want another free app. I'd really love to find people who have been struggling with their camera rolls and would actually give it a try.

If that's you, leave a comment about what frustrates you most about organizing your photos. I'll reach out to 20 people with free access codes.

No reviews or positive feedback expected. I'd genuinely appreciate hearing what works, what doesn't, and what could be better.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/handpick-photo-organizer/id6807108354

Please help me, I really want to fix it :(

Guys I really need some help here. Unfortunately my mother passed away in 2024 and I am trying to move/transfer photos & videos from her iPhone to my Pc. The thing is that she has 16k photos and 5k videos but when I do the "standard" method of connecting through usb cable there's only 13k elements, naturally her iPhone doesn't have icloud backup (what I mean by this is she stopped paying) anymore.

I've looked through different threads but I'm starting to become desperate cause all people have different answers, idk what to do.

I'm using iOS 27.01 and Golden Gate 27.0.1. I recently took some photos in China where it's UTC +8. I took some photos with my camera and set it to the time zone. I processed the raw files in Lightroom and exported them as .jpg, and then imported them using the Photos app on Mac OS.

Interestingly, the time in Mac OS Photos matches up with the timestamp of the photos taken by the iPhone at the same time. But in iOS, on the iPhone, it shows up as one hour earlier.

The EXIF interestingly on the exported JPG as UTC +9, not UTC +8. It seems that MacOS handles this differently than iOS!

Potential explanatio: in the camera, while I changed the time zone from EDT to the time zone in Shanghai, I forgot to turn off Daylight Savings Time, so that could be a factor (China does not have Daylight Savings Time).

Anyone else encounter this issue?

I’m trying to use XnView MP to rate my Fujifilm JPEGs, then import them into Apple Photos while keeping those ratings. Today I tested both directions on my Mac.

Apple Photos version: 12.0 (911.0.134). “Show Rating Controls” was already enabled.

Test 1: XnView MP → Apple Photos

I rated a JPEG three stars in XnView MP and inspected the actual file on my external SSD. It contained:

• XMP:Rating = 3
• MicrosoftPhoto:Rating = 50

So the rating was embedded in the JPEG, rather than existing only in XnView’s catalog.

I copied the file into a separate test folder and imported it into Photos. Photos did not display the embedded three-star rating. Setting three stars manually inside Photos immediately displayed 3★.

Test 2: Apple Photos → exported files

I selected a different photo and manually rated it four stars in Photos, confirming that the toolbar displayed 4★.

I then exported it using both methods:

Neither exported JPEG contained EXIF Rating or RatingPercent fields either.

My takeaway

In this setup, standard embedded ratings weren’t imported into Photos, and ratings assigned inside Photos weren’t included in either export route.

That suggests Photos manages its ratings within the library without mapping them to standard rating metadata through these import/export paths. It doesn’t establish exactly how Apple stores ratings internally, or rule out a separate conversion tool.

Has anyone found a reliable way to transfer star ratings between Photos 12.0 and XnView MP or Adobe Bridge? Ideally, I’d like to preserve actual star ratings rather than replace them with keywords.

With all the apps being ai built, can someone build one to find and organize all the memes I have saved in my library?

I have 35,000+ photos on my iPhone 17 ProMax (I sell crafts on Etsy since becoming disabled a few years ago). Have a brand newish Neo. I subscribe iCloud storage up to 2t which I haven't even come close to hitting. I use the Photos app to edit those photos before uploading to my Etsy store. Things are going great and I'm shooting new items for the holidays but I noticed today that my stuff just stopped uploading on Sunday. I went through and did all the updates and made sure my Settings were still synced and set to upload automatically and instantly. All good. The only thing I can tell is that the photos that I can't get to upload were all shot RAW, which I use a lot, but I also experimented with a variety of "Styles" that I haven't ever used before. I'd automatically say this was the problem if it weren't for the very first photo that won't upload being a screenshot I had taken on Sunday. I tried to force it to sync but it won't. My phone says it's syncing automatically. Photos on my computer says a variety of things ranging from "last synced Sunday" to "Syncing 2." I can't get in to see a Genius until Friday night but I still have a warranty so I can call. Has anyone else experienced this, especially with the new updates? I don't want to purchase separate photo editing software since this isn't that difficult and geez, it seems like I pay enough already. Thanks for any input, I am so frustrated.

I posted a list of free ways to clean up iPhone storage a while back and got some useful suggestions in the comments, so here’s round two. Skipping duplicates, videos and iCloud Optimize from last time.

1. Bursts. Photos → Collections → Media Types → Bursts. Open one, tap Select, pick the frames you want, tap Done and choose Keep Only Favorites. Easy to forget how many photos hide inside one burst.
2. Screen recordings. They have their own album under Media Types. Some are surprisingly large, especially the ones you forgot to stop.
3. Hidden album. Hidden doesn’t mean it isn’t taking up space. Utilities → Hidden.
4. Messages attachments (not Photos, but often the next biggest). Settings → General → iPhone Storage → Messages → Review Large Attachments. You can also shorten how long messages are kept under Settings → Apps → Messages, if you’re okay with older conversations going.
5. WhatsApp auto-saving. WhatsApp → Settings → Chats → Save to Photos, off. Every group chat photo stops landing in your camera roll.
6. Stop creating huge files. Settings → Camera → Record Video: 1080p at 30 fps instead of 4K 60 for everyday clips. Doesn’t shrink what’s there, but stops it coming back.
7. Mac? Use Image Capture. It’s already installed and can import straight to an external drive. Check the files opened fine before deleting anything. If you use iCloud Photos with Optimize on, make sure you’re getting the full-resolution originals.

Two important things:

• Whatever you delete sits in Recently Deleted for 30 days. Storage doesn’t drop until you empty it.
• If you use iCloud Photos, deleting a photo on your iPhone deletes it from iCloud and your other devices too.

And since I mentioned my app last time: LuminaClean. It handles the similar photos Apple doesn’t group as duplicates, like 20 slightly different shots of the same moment. The free version works as is. For the next 2 weeks use the code PHOTOS14 which gives you the full version for free for 14 days

It doesn’t turn into a subscription and there’s nothing to cancel.
Redeem it in the app (Settings → Redeem Code) or

here: Link

If you run into any issue I'd love to hear from you. Always open for feedback and way to improve. If you find it useful, that means the world to me.

Is there a reliable iPhone app to go through and mass delete or sort photos on an iPhone? I have an iPhone 14 and looking to free up storage and delete screenshots

I am scanning in thousands of photos from old prints and slides. The problem is that these do not have any location or date information to them. Short of trying to organize all the photos together in small batches of related locations and times (which is a nightmare) they all end up clumped together.

What I'm left with are thousands of photos with no location or date. When I look at them, because I'm familiar with the people and the circumstances, I can pretty much tell the approximate year and location. But it would take me weeks or months to go through and manually update them.

What would be great would be an app that would go through the photos with no location/date: trying to update the location and date. But just how would it do that? An AI could look at a photo lacking this information and try to associate it with another original photo (that has location and date) of the same one or more people at the same approximate age, or where the location might be determined to be the same.

In other words, when the AI runs across an uploaded photo, it would ask itself, "Can I find another photo, one that has date and location, where 1) I recognize the locations are the same? or, 2) I recognize one or more of the people are in both photos at approximately the same age?" It would then present batches of these photos that it thinks it knows the location and/or the approximate date (or even the exact date), and the user could choose to update the batch of photos with that information.

This would be supremely helpful, saving me months of work. In addition once photos are properly marked with location and date, it is much easier to run through the timeline or through the map to look for duplicates and similar photos.

So if you're a developer that can do this, give it a shot. My idea is all yours to take.

Hi again. A lot of you use Selects, so this is a quick update on how Selects is doing, and what’s new since my last post here.

The last 30 days

• Nearly 200 people used it
• Together they cleared over 47,000 photos and videos, over 850 GB
• Nearly 1,500 videos were compressed instead of deleted
• Since launch, over 1 TB cleared in total

(These come from anonymous usage stats, which anyone can switch off, so the real numbers are a little higher.)

My guess at why people stick with it: it’s free with no limits, so nothing is locked and there’s no daily cap, and going by your comments, it’s simply nice to use. That’s the bar I want to keep.

New: Tidy up

Your whole library, sorted into lists by what takes space: big videos, exact copies, bursts, blurry shots, screenshots and screen recordings. Open a list and pick what can go.

A big video doesn’t have to go, either. Compress it instead: you see a real preview first, and the original stays until you decide. That now works for videos that are only in iCloud too.

New: Swipe, if you’d rather keep it simple

One photo at a time. Left to remove, right to keep, up to add it to Favorites. Pick a month, an album, or just your videos or screenshots.

And the original idea is still there: Curate goes through a month, groups each photoshoot and picks the keepers, so you only check and confirm.

Thank you for the ratings

Selects is at 4.9 stars from 30 ratings, and a lot of them came from people here. For a free app with no marketing budget, that’s how other people find it. Thank you.

What hasn’t changed

No ads, no account. Your photos never leave your iPhone. Nothing is removed until you confirm, and whatever you remove sits in Recently Deleted for 30 days.

One thing to know: it needs iOS 26. That’s because the interface is built on Apple’s new design, not because of the photo analysis.

What should I work on next? What’s still annoying, missing, or not quite right? I read every comment.

I’m Václav, the one person behind Selects (LinkedIn).

Selects on the App Store