Finding Recently Saved Photos on My iPhone Is Much Easier With This One Change

Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9 that the next version of the iPhone’s operating system will be called iOS 26, and it will bring a lot of new features to your iPhone in the fall, like a transparent glass design on icons and menus and redesigned interfaces for the Camera and Photos apps. But when Apple released iOS 18 in September, it brought a simple change to Photos to make it easy to find recently saved photos, no matter when they were taken. The change sorts your photos by when they were added to Photos, not by when the photo was taken, and it’s saved me so much time searching for photos.

An Expert’s Guide to iOS 18

Before, if someone sent me a photo and I saved it, the photo would be placed in chronological order — based on when the picture was taken — alongside all my other photos by default. So if a family member sent me a photo from last summer and I saved it, the photo would be lost in a sea of other snaps from the past year.

I’d scroll through hundreds of pics and videos to find it, and sometimes I’d give up. But there’s a toggle in Photos called Sort by Recently Added that lets you sort your pics based on when they were saved to your device, not when they were taken.

Here’s how to sort your photos by when they were saved to Photos so you won’t lose a picture again.

How to sort your photos based on when they were saved

1. Open Photos.
2. Scroll up into your photos until the grid takes up your whole screen.
3. Tap the up and down arrows in the bottom-left corner of your screen.
4. Tap Sort by Recently Added.

Once you’ve tapped that option, you may see your photos shift to adjust to the setting change. Your most recently saved or taken photo will now be at the bottom of the grid, even if it was from your wedding years ago.

For more on iOS 18, here’s what you need to know about iOS 18.5 and iOS 18.4. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet and everything to know about iOS 26.

Watch this: Liquid Glass Stirs Debate, but These iOS 26 Updates Matter More

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