iPhone iPad Photos Lost After iOS 18 Update? How to Get Back

While some iPhone users enjoy the new features, some are suffering from lost pictures after the upcoming iOS 18 update. But why did photos disappear from the iPhone? Usually, iPhone photos get lost because the iCloud sync may go wrong or the pictures may be deleted accidentally. How to fix this issue? This article will list 5 ways to solve the issue that photos disappeared after the iOS update. Keep on reading and figure them out.

1. Re-log into iCloud Account and Check iCloud Photo Sync

If your iCloud photos are lost after the iOS 18 update, you can go to check whether you have logged in to your iCloud account. If you have logged in, you can log out and then log in again to have a try. It may help you get back your pictures. Also, you have to make sure you have enabled iCloud Photo Library if you’ve used this feature before. The iCloud photos will disappear if the Sync function is off. To fix phone updated but photos are gone with iCloud Sync:

Step 1. Reset iCloud Photos

First, ensure you’re signed into the same iCloud account with other devices that you want to share photos with.

Go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos to turn on iCloud Photos. You may turn it off and wait for a while firstly, then turn it on again and check if it works fine.

Step 2. Tap Download and Keep Originals

This step will download all your original pictures and videos you have synced. Before you download your photos, you may clean your iPhone first and make sure there is enough space to restore your photos.

2. Check the Recently Deleted Folder to Recover Photos

If iPhone deleted your photos after iOS update, there’s another possibility that to check the Recently Deleted folder on your iPhone. This folder can save your deleted photos for 30 days which was released with iOS 8 update and optimized through iOS 11. It still works on iOS 14 and earlier. If you have mis-deleted photos from your device, you can easily recover them to your photo library or albums.

3. Restore from iTunes/iCloud Backup

You might have met many guides that told you to back up your devices. It is quite necessary to have an iTunes or iCloud backup in advance, which is the best way to avoid photos disappeared from iPhone after the update. If you have made one, you can follow us to fix iPhone photos missing problems by restoring iDevice with iTunes or iCloud backup; If you haven’t any available backup, move to Solution 4 to fix it.

With data backups, you can recover lost iPhone photos easily.  There are two important things you need to know before you restore your pictures:

1. Once you restored your iPhone with the selected iTunes/iCloud backup, all the current data on your iPhone will be erased and replaced by the content in the backup. This means the new messages, photos, contacts, and other iOS contents that are not included in the backup will be erased.
2. You never know what files will be restored to your iPhone/iPad before restoring your iDevice. So you even can’t be sure if this iTunes or iCloud backup contains the missing photos.

Method 1: Restore Your iPhone from iTunes Backup

Therefore, we recommend an iPhone backup extractor tool – PhoneRescue for iOS, which can extract anything you like from an iTunes or iCloud Backup. The best part is it will never overwrite your data on your iPhone/iPad and won’t erase your device at all. In addition, you can preview the pictures before you retrieve them, which means you can also selectively restore your photos to your iPhone/iPad with it.

Here, are the steps of how to recover deleted photos from iTunes or iCloud backup with PhoneRescue for iOS.

Step 1. Download PhoneRescue on your computer and run it, connect your device to the computer with a USB cable. Select Recover from Backup and click the right arrow button to scan all the iTunes backups.

Step 2. Select the right backup, and click the right arrow button to scan this backup. And then click the Compare button (it will find out all the contents included in backup but not on your Device), select Photos and other file types you want to retrieve, and then click the OK button.

Step 3. Preview the photos and select the photos you want to recover, and then click the To Device button to get them back to your iPhone iPad’s Photos App, or click the To Computer button to recover them to your PC or Mac computer.

If you fail to find the missing photos in this iTunes backup, you can repeat the steps above to scan another iTunes backup. If you still failed to recover them, this means those photos are not included in iTunes backup, you can read on to get them back with iCloud backup or move to Solution 5 to recover lost iPhone photos without backup.

Method 2: Restore Your iPhone from iCloud Backup

Step 1. Download PhoneRescue on your computer, connect your iPhone or iPad to the computer with its USB cable. Select Recover from iCloud and then click the right arrow button to go to the next step.

Step 2. Input your Apple ID and password to log in.

Step 3. Select the right iCloud backup, click the Download button, select Photos and other file types you want to retrieve, and click OK to start downloading this backup. When the downloading is finished, click the right arrow to scan this iCloud backup. The download time varies from your backup’s size and network’s speed.

Step 4. Preview these photos backed up in iCloud backup, select the photos you want to recover, and then click To Computer or To Device button to recover them to the computer or iPhone iPad’s Photos App.

4. Recover Lost Photos without Backup

After trying all the solutions above, if you still fail to fix this data loss problem – photos disappeared from iPhone after an update, here has the last way to try – recover lost iPhone photos without backup. Absolutely, you can’t make it directly without outside help. Just like we mentioned above, the iPhone iPad backup extractor – PhoneRescue for iOS also can work as an iOS data recovery tool to recover deleted or lost photos on iPhone iPad without backup.

Next, we will show you how to recover lost photos on iPhone iPad without backup.

Step 1. Download PhoneRescue on your computer. Run it and connect your device to the computer with a USB cable. Select Recover from iOS and click right arrow button to go next step.

Step 2. Select Photos, Photo Videos, and Thumbnails > Click the OK button.

Step 3. Preview the deleted but not overwritten photos on your iPhone > Select the photos you want to retrieve > Click To Device or To Computer button to recover lost photos. To Device button will get lost or missing photos directly back to iPhone iPad’s Photos App. To Computer button will recover lost iPhone or iPad photos to your PC or Mac computer.

5. Restart Your iPhone/iPad

Sometimes, your iPhone photos disappeared after the iOS update only because of software errors. Also, you can try to restart your iDevice. With different device models, the way to restart won’t be the same.

To Restart different types of iPhone

Reboot iPhone X or later:

1. Press the Side button and one of the Volume buttons until the power off slider appears.
2. Drag the slider to turn off the device.
3. Press the Side button again until you see the Apple logo.

Reboot iPhone 8 and earlier:

1. Press the Top button until the power off slider appears.
2. Drag the slider to turn off the device.
3. Press the Top button again until you see the Apple logo.

To Restart iPad

The Bottom Line

The methods we introduce work for all iOS. And Phonerescue for iOS is the best recovery tool to help you find missing photos, contacts, messages or other data. And now, you can get the latest version of PhoneRescue. If you like this guide, please share it to help more people.