Apple Photos libraries randomly reorganize/forget

[V8LM]

Does anyone else who uses Apple Photos with libraries occasionally experience photos disappearing from libraries, libraries disappear/move, and tags disappearing?

Have three devices synced (iMac, iPhone, iPad). Manage photos on the iMac and changes get reflected across all devices. Sometime later, notice that some, seemingly random changes are made to the libraries.

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, is there an explanation and fix?

[Tony1963]

I have similar. I pointed this out to Apple early on, no reply.
Frustrating as when I just about get used to quickly finding certain folders, they’ve moved.

I’ve not looked for a fix.

[StevieBee]

I've long used the Photos app and generally find it to be robust and reliable.

Apple do occasionally add new functions and utilities which can bump things to somewhere they weren't previously but I've never had albums or folders go missing.

It's generally good practice to create a library on your hard drive or a local external drive rather than run the entirety of the library from iCloud, using iCloud as the means to sync devices and also back everything up to. There is also sometimes a latency between updating something on one device and it appearing on others.

Worth disabling the auto-update function for the app in the settings across all your devices. If some are auto-updating and some aren't this can cause issues.

Edited by StevieBee on Friday 27th December 14:49

[Tony1963]

StevieBee said:

I've long used the Photos app and generally find it to be robust and reliable.

Apple do occasionally add new functions and utilities which can bump things to somewhere they weren't previously but I've never had albums or folders go missing.

It's generally good practice to create a library on your hard drive or a local external drive rather than run the entirety of the library from iCloud, using iCloud as the means to sync devices and also back everything up to. There is also sometimes a latency between updating something on one device and it appearing on others.

Worth disabling the auto-update function for the app in the settings across all your devices. If some are auto-updating and some aren't this can cause issues.

Edited by StevieBee on Friday 27th December 14:49

With iOS 18 the Photos arrangement changed completely. It hasn’t been as robust for me since then. To me, it’s just horrible, and the only feature of iOS 18 I really don’t like.

[V8LM]

Corrected some of the errors in my library yesterday. This was 09:52 yesterday:



After sorting and moving things around, this was 11:01 yesterday:



All was fine. Just checked now, and changed to this:



As you can see, some of the changes I made yesterday have stuck, but I wouldn't be surprised to see these get lost in time.


ETA:

Sorted the albums again:



Then opened and closed a few times. Then 'Repair'ed the library to see if that causes a change, which indeed it did - went back to as it was yesterday morning:



Any ideas as to what is going on?

Edited by V8LM on Sunday 29th December 15:36

[V8LM]

And again, overnight from this



to this



ETA:

And as I'm watching, the others are coming back to where they were....

Edited by V8LM on Monday 30th December 09:21

[StevieBee]

V8LM said:

Any ideas as to what is going on?

Have you checked that all devices are running the same version?

If not, what you are doing on one device may not be possible on another. This can cause the changes you make to revert or adopt an approximation of what you want in a way that works across all devices.

The current version is 10.0. This is what my file system looks like:



I don't have a 'Flagged' option. Instead, this is 'Favourites'. This makes me think you might be a few versions adrift on at least one of your devices.

The only other thing I can think of is that the non-allocated content has something in the meta data that is making the app think it's something it isn't.

[V8LM]

Thanks. Yes, mine is 10.0 and the same structure. The 'Flagged' smart album is a hang-over from earlier (and I've just removed it).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Yk3PUSJPSi0


ETA: Looks like it is not allowing me to change certain folders - either their location or their name or delete. I can make duplicates of them which are fine.

Edited by V8LM on Monday 30th December 11:24