iOS 18 Adds 'Recovered' Album in Photos to Restore Lost or Damaged Photos and Videos

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iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia include a new Photos app feature designed to help users recover images and videos that are lost or damaged, providing a way to get missing content back.

icloud photos
There is a "Recovered" album in the Utilities section of ‌Photos‌, and it shows up if there are pictures or videos on a user's device that are not part of their ‌Photos‌ Library. If you see the Recovered album in your ‌Photos‌ app, tapping into it will provide an option to permanently delete or restore any pictures or video stored in the album.

‌Photos‌ and videos can be lost due to database corruption issues, images taken with a camera app that did not properly get saved to the ‌Photos‌ library, or third-party apps that are provided with access to manage a Photo Library. Here's how to recover a lost image or video:

  1. Open the ‌Photos‌ app and tap into Albums.
  2. Scroll down to Utilities, and choose the Recovered album.
  3. Tap on a photo or video in the album, or use Select to select multiple items.
  4. Tap on Permanently Delete or Restore to Library.

When upgrading to ‌iOS 18‌, ‌iPadOS 18‌, or ‌macOS Sequoia‌, an iPhone, iPad, or Mac will automatically scan for photos and videos that are able to be recovered, providing immediate access to any missing content.

Note that the Recovered album only shows up in the Utilities section of the ‌Photos‌ app if lost photos or videos are located on a device. If there are none, you will not see the album.

With iOS 17.5.1 and iPadOS 17.5.1, there was a fix for an unusual bug related to a database corruption issue. After installing iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5, some users saw long-deleted images reappearing in their Photo Library. Apple later said this was due to a database corruption issue that had caused the photos to reappear even after being deleted.

The Recovered album feature in the latest software updates should prevent something like this from happening again, while also giving users access to photos and videos that are in limbo.

‌iOS 18‌, ‌iPadOS 18‌, and ‌macOS Sequoia‌ betas are available to developers and public beta testers at this time. The software updates will see a public launch this fall.

Related Roundups: iOS 18, iPadOS 18
Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18

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Top Rated Comments

GMShadow Avatar
GMShadow
2 weeks ago

It’s good to have.. but wouldn’t it be better to not have these issues in the first place..?
If you can create a database system that never corrupts you won't be able to dodge the trucks of money.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
fatTribble Avatar
fatTribble
2 weeks ago

It’s good to have.. but wouldn’t it be better to not have these issues in the first place..? Or ask the users to resolve whenever there is such occurrences, rather than creating an album?

I somehow feel like this will be very hard for average users to understand what the purpose is
I think it would be confusing for people to be shown random pictures at random times and ask them to make a decision on the spot. At least with this Album they are there in case the person ever wants to look. Yes, preventing problems is better. I’m sure Apple thought about that.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
6787872 Avatar
6787872
2 weeks ago
i wonder if other people's pictures will show up here...
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Tagbert Avatar
Tagbert
2 weeks ago

Yes. A bunch of peoples old photos started showing up enexpectedly. Might as well make lemonade out of it.
This is the mechanism that resurfaced those photos which had failed to actually be deleted. I don't see any problem. It's a useful feature to help restore photos when the index database gets corrupted. Definitely better than having to rebuild the index to do the same thing.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MiBook84 Avatar
MiBook84
2 weeks ago
Apple tries their best to make users buy iPhones with little memory and instead use iCloud so that their photos and other personal information is stored on their servers where data is more easily accessible than on the device. It’s a weird twist as Apple always markets privacy as a number one feature and always talks about on device security. Security in the cloud however. That is another question. The recovered photos feature comes well in time after the bug that caused other people’s iCloud data to sync to other devices and I think we all have to agree that storing such data in massive centralized servers isn’t always great. Let’s see when that changes.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Ronlap Avatar
Ronlap
2 weeks ago
I have a bunch of photos that show up as thumbnails but when I click on them, I get an error that they cannot be found on disc. Photos is set to import all images, so not sure how this happened.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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