iOS 18 helps you recover lost photos and videos
iOS 18 is now in public beta , so if you’ve been waiting to jump on board, now might be the time — though you may want to wait for the finished release. Either way, this latest version of the iOS 18 beta brings a number of new features, including a handy way to restore photos.
MacRumors has discovered that this beta adds a “Recovered” album to the Utilities section of the Photos app. This album contains any photos or videos that are on your iPhone that are not part of your photo library.
You might expect all images on your device to be in your main photo library, but sometimes photos and videos can run into problems due to a corrupted database, a third-party app that can’t properly save an image or video to the photo library, or other issues.
It’s those pictures that this folder is for, and you’ll be given the option to recover or delete any of the pictures or videos that appear in your Recovered album. Note that you’ll only see this album if there are photos or videos on your device that aren’t already in your Photo Library. If there’s nothing to recover, the Recovered album won’t be there.
Find lost photos and get back deleted photos
The emergence of this Recovered album feature may have been prompted by a database corruption issue in iOS 17.5, which caused previously deleted photos to reappear for some users. With this new album, it’s likely that any iteration of that bug will cause images to appear in the Recovered album instead of your main photo library. So not only can the feature help you recover lost photos, but it can also ensure that any photos you delete, stay deleted.
If you’re interested in trying this feature out for yourself, check out our guide on how to download the iOS 18 public beta . But be aware that this isn’t a finished or stable release yet, so we recommend waiting until the final release, which is likely coming in September.