iOS 26’s Photos app re-adds the tab bar, a major design reversal

3 weeks ago 1

Apple’s Photos app underwent major changes last year in iOS 18. But this year in iOS 26, Photos has reversed course on the single biggest aspect of that overhaul: the tab bar is back.

iOS 18 removed Photos’ tab bar, but iOS 26 brings it back

iOS 26 brings redesigns to many Apple apps, such as the new, simplified Camera interface.

For some users, major iPhone design changes are more scary than exciting. And the most recent evidence they might use is iOS 18’s Photos overhaul.

Apple’s Photos app made huge design changes last year, the largest of which was a big navigation revamp.

Photos ditched its familiar tab bar interface for navigation in favor of a single-screen interface.

Essentially, where once you had multiple tabs at the bottom of the screen to bounce between, in iOS 18 everything was thrown together into a single page.

But Apple just released its first iOS 26 beta, and the tab bar is back.

Open Photos in iOS 16 and you’ll see that the single-screen interface has been split into two tabs:

Library
Collections

There’s also a Search icon available to the right of these two tabs.

Library contains the view that, in iOS 18, was available in the top part of the screen. Collections offers all the different customizable sections that formerly lived below the library.

Though Apple has revised its Photos app several times in the past year since shipping iOS 18, the reappearance of the tab bar represents the biggest reversal yet to a pre-iOS 18 design.

iOS 26 may undergo a variety of revisions still before it ships publicly in the fall, as today’s beta is still very early on.

But for now, at least, it seems that the familiar tab bar interface is coming back to the Photos app.

Are you glad Photos got its tab bar back in iOS 26? Let us know in the comments.