Easily Find Recently Saved Photos on Your iPhone With This One Trick

Apple released iOS 26 on Sept. 15, and the update brought a new Liquid Glass redesign, call screening and many hidden features to your iPhone. But when Apple released iOS 18 in 2024, 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.

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. 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.

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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. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner of your screen.
3. 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 26, here’s my review of the OS, how to reduce the Liquid Glass effects and how to block spam calls in the update. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.

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