A UX improvement proposal for iOS Photos
Apple brought the tabs back,
then hid them again.
Apple listened to the complaint, shipped the fix, and the fix reproduced the complaint. One slot in the Photos library, and the API that already solves it.
Apple deleted the tab bar in iOS 18. People said they kept losing their place. Apple restored it in iOS 26. People still say they keep losing their place.
Apple listened, shipped the fix, and the fix reproduced the complaint. This is why that happened, and what already exists in the platform to solve it properly.
The switch is only there when you do not need it
Photos gives you two places to be, Library and Collections. The control that moves between them collapses as soon as you scroll down through the grid, which is the thing you opened Photos to do.
What matters is the space it leaves. It does not leave one. A different control moves into the same position, the Years, Months and All timeline picker. The pixel that said Collections now says Months.
The screen keeps a control in that spot, with the same shape and the same glass, doing something else. Muscle memory has somewhere to land, and it lands wrong.The finding
One slot, two controls, never both
Tapping the collapsed icon does bring the switch back. It also takes the timeline picker away. The two are mutually exclusive, and the slot gives you no way to tell which one you are about to get.
There is no state in which both are available. Choosing where you are in the library, and choosing how the library is zoomed, are an either or at every scroll position past the top.
I use this app every day, and I was three days into building this before I learned that tapping the collapsed icon brings the switch back.Discoverability, measured on the only user I can vouch for
The record
- iOS 17
- Persistent tab bar
- iOS 18
- Tab bar removed, replaced by one scrolling surface
- iOS 26
- Tab bar restored, and minimised on scroll. Photos opted in
- iOS 27
- prominentTabIdentifier is introduced, and keeps a nominated tab visible through the collapse
UITabBarController.prominentTabIdentifier is the mechanism. Apple built it, and announced it at WWDC26. In the Photos on my phone today, the switch still goes.
That is the whole proposal. Not a redesign. An adoption.
What that looks like
Nothing about the resting view changes. On scroll, the collapse becomes a compression rather than an erasure. The active side keeps its label, the inactive side shrinks to its icon, and the control stays where your thumb left it. The timeline picker moves into the filter menu at the top right, which already exists and already holds view options.
A third direction used a swipe gesture in the resting view, and in the resting view nothing tells you the gesture exists. It stays on the board as explored and set aside, because showing only the ideas that worked would make this a sales document.
What this does not claim
No usability test was run. The tap counts are structural, counted from the interface rather than measured with participants. If anyone wants evidence of user harm rather than evidence of added steps, that test is the honest next thing to do.
Not affiliated with Apple.
The whole file is open.
The status quo teardown, the three directions, the one that was set aside, and the component library the screens are built from.