Apple releases iOS 17.5.1 to fix Photo glitch that made deleted photos reappear

Apple has released a point update to fix the iOS 17.5 photo glitch. iOS 17.5.1 patches the bug that was causing deleted photos to be available again.

As you may recall, the iOS 17.5 update was made available to users on May 14th. When users installed the update on their iPhones, they noticed that photos that they had previously deleted from their library, were now available again.

Users began to worry whether this would cause their old photos to appear on devices that they had sold or given to others. Naturally, this caused quite an uproar among the Apple community, blogs, and security experts. Their question was, how do deleted photos return automatically? Were they being saved on a server? Isn’t this a privacy risk? The short answer is no. Read on.

What caused deleted photos to reappear in iOS 17.5?

One reddit user wrote that they had reported an issue to Apple in March. The user stated that the Photos app froze while uploading several photos and videos that they had captured on the iPhone, and the images simply vanished. However, after discussing the issues with Apple, they narrowed the issue to the Files app, which they had used to connect to an NAS server. This particular bug was patched in iOS 17.5, and the user got their photos back. The person also theorizes that the bug was probably rare and that Apple could not track it. They explained that it is possible that the photos and videos that they had edited or deleted before their iPhone froze, prevented the changes from being synced to iCloud, and that the photos were merely hidden from the photo library locally. It is also worth noting that images that you delete from Photos stay in the bin for 30 days, before they are deleted permanently.

Another user shared more information about the bug. Apparently, they were in touch with a private contractor at Apple, who explained what may have caused the glitch. The contractor had reassured them that Apple was not saving their photos or videos to a remote server without the consent of the user. They also stated that the glitch is not a backdoor into iCloud or iPhones, and that the device and data stored on the cloud are mostly secure. Yeah, “mostly secure” isn’t very reassuring, but the rest of the post clarifies things.

According to the insider, the iOS 16.5 Photos glitch happened when the media was deleted from the Photos app, but not the Files app. For those unaware, the Files app is the file manager in iOS that you can use to access content saved on your device. The user says that while photos that are deleted from the Photos app are removed from the gallery, an identical copy of the images are present in the Files app. But, a rare bug in iOS 17.5 resulted in causing the system to re-save all the photos, videos from the Files app, back into the Photos app. It can occur when the phone re-indexes the files after a system update to build a database.

That actually makes sense, and it does tally with the release note for iOS 17.5.1. The change log mentions that: “This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted.”

The iOS 17.5.1 update is available for the Phone XS and later. iPadOS 17.5.1 patches the Photos bug on the following models: iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation and later, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 6th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later

I think an official statement from Apple would have been welcomed by users, I mean it is the company’s responsibility to dismiss scaremongering rumors and clarify the situation, especially when people are questioning the privacy policies.

Summary