A quick rant about iOS 18

2024/10/04 #uiux

This is just a short rant about one of the worst UI changes Apple made as part of their Photos.app redesign in iOS 18. Please take a look at the following simulator screenshots.

The thing you will probably notice right away is that the image is way smaller on the second one. The reason for this is that the controls at the top and bottom of the screen are no longer overlayed. As a result the image are way too tiny when the iPhone is held horizontally and the controls are visible.

Why is this a bad idea? Well, most of the time the stuff one cares about in a photo is in the center of the image, not in the upper or lower edges. In order to quickly check a photo after taking it (for example if the main subject is in focus/has their eyes open/whatever else one wants to check normally) it now requires an additional tap to have the image use the entire available vertical screen size.

On iOS 17 part of the image was hidden behind the controls but the image was still sized so that it used the entire vertical screen size. This was a much better compromise to enable checking the details in the center of an image.

There are a few other things I could criticize about this screen alone (the very odd lack of spacing on the top of the circular buttons on the top right would be one) but I'll leave it at this today.

I really hope Apple reverts this change soon but I seriously doubt it will.

Update

2024/12/12

Apple DID actually fix this very problem in iOS 18.2 which was released this week. I'm really glad I was wrong, haha.