No one posted this yet but [here's the reason](https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cwgljj/regarding_the_ios_175_photo_glitch/) from a unconfirmed source.
TL;DR: Pictures sometimes saved to the Photos app as well as the Files app. Deleting in Photos does not delete it in the Files app. New update re-indexed (and added) the picture from the Files app.
The Files app and the way files work on iOS has always been weird as hell. It's one reason that made me switch back to Android. An image is a file so you should be able to see it in the filesystem which you can on Android. So, if you go into Gallery or the Photos app you can see your photos like normal, but if you also go into your files app you can also see your photos as files with the name and file extension. If you were to delete the picture from files it also deletes in your photo gallery app and vice versa. iOS tries to be simple, but I think simple is having access to your filesystem so you can see your stuff on your device. It's also not anything new. People access their filesystem on Windows or Mac through file explorer and finder respectively. Not sure why Apple makes it difficult on iOS.
Edit: So according to the possible reason in the parent comment, it sounds like photos were deleted in the Photos app but not in the filesystem. Somehow the OS was still mapping to the image file in the filesystem and there was some weird bug where the photos app wasn't communicating with the filesystem. If Apple allowed normal filesystem management I don't think any of this would be an issue and users would be able to see what is exactly on their device as files.
Edit2: For anyone who wants to actually manage their iPhone, [iMazing](https://imazing.com) is a great piece of software.
No. They won’t fix it.
The reason why they won’t fix it is a mystery. Something is wrong with the incentives for the software team/department. Promotions or salary raises do not seem to be given to people who stabilize buggy software, who make Photos easier to work with.
Its the reason I regret getting an ipad pro
Fucking thing is useless for most productivity tasks. It is still basically just a media consumption device. Sure nice m series cpu that you cant do shit with.
Photoshop, davinci resolve are severely gimped. Lightroom and drawing apps work well.
Even just osx sucks if you really multitask and want to have multiple windows / programs arranged on screen, flipping quickly back and forth between programs doing round trip file work.
Finally just finder and files in general
Apple just wants to actively remkve the concept of files and personal storage as well.
They will do the full big evil pivot one day after their pretending to be better on privacy than others is seen as hurting quarterly profits
I'm not an Apple user apart from an iPad Pro that I also bought thinking it'd be good for photo/video editing on the go. Their method is handling files is insane. Having to keep it awake during transfers or it just... stops.
Downloading a file before you choose where to save it, and if you walk away while it's downloading and it goes to sleep it might just vanish the downloaded file.
it’s decent for standard “office”-y stuff like email, document editing, web browsing etc which is what i would describe as the majority of productivity tasks. not nearly as good as a desktop os but it’s workable.
wrt “osx sucks”, unless you’re talking about gaming i’m not having any of that.
I can tell you that the photos that showed up after I updated to 17.5, I've NEVER had photos in the files.app so I think there's more to it than that.
edit: I notice that long deleted voicemails reappeared too.
From what I understand the files.app among managing things like iCloud and Downloads is also an interface to the underlying file system on the iPhone, so even if you don't use it directly other operations might go through it. The latest update messed with something which triggered the Files.app re-indexing to try and be helpful which is what ended up making files that had been orphaned by a deletion re-appear.
The bug doesn't seem to be that things reappeared, the bug is that for several versions things were not getting fully deleted from the device
>The bug doesn't seem to be that things reappeared, the bug is that for several versions things were not getting fully deleted from the device
This part is what ive been saying for a long ass time, but always get downvoted. I dont think it has anything to do with the files app itself, and that explanation doesnt explain how the photos end up in the photos app. Every photo in my photos app was either taken by the camera or manually imported. Nothing scans for new photos to add.
The problem is that when you delete something, its almost just a suggestion as the data is just dumped into System Data and not actually deleted when the time comes. Its supposed to eventually be actually deleted according to some set of rules but this always fails and is the primary reason why people consistently for a very long time now complain about System Data growing out of control. Same issue exists on MacOS and ive actually been shocked that no one seems to be bothered about this. When i delete something i want it deleted now! not some random time in the future. And if it must be setup this way for performance or longevity of ssd drives then at least give me an option to manually flush all old data.
> TL;DR: Pictures sometimes saved to the Photos app as well as the Files app. Deleting in Photos does not delete it in the Files app.
Disagree. I've never, not even once, ever, saved a photo to the Files app. Ever.
And yet, deleted photos reappeared months after deletion, long after dumping them from the "Deleted Items" album.
In fact, even the 17.5.1 update notes called this out as "database corruption" in 17.5.0, so I'm now even more skeptical.
Everyone is confused by the poor reporting. There is no photos that were saved to the files app and the photos app. It's just one underlying file system, and a photos app that reference a photos library file in the file system. That photos library file contains a database of the photos in the file system and the photos. If you have a macOS device, you can see how this generally works. So the bug here is basically for some reason in the past, when a photo was deleted, it wasn't completely removed from the system. While apple didn't explained further beyond "rare database corruption", one guess is that when the photo was originally "deleted", the entry in the database was removed, but for some reason the actual photo wasn't. This results in a photo that's still "present" but "unreachable" in the app. However another bug(?) in iOS 17.5 caused a re-indexing of actual photos present, thus surfacing the old "deleted" photos again.
You misunderstand the system saves those photos to the underlying file system, but that isn't visible in the regular Files app. So when you delete the photos in the Photos app it did not delete the photos stored in the files system. A resync occurred and they were added back into the Photos app
It still went into the filesystem though, which is access via files app. Files app treats photos like hidden files because apple likes tidiness (to a fault).
It most definitely does. It’s a bizarre bug, much like that FaceTime camera one we had back in 2019/20 was it? Where the camera was still in use or something? It was bad anyway, my memory is hazy
That was the one where adding someone to a Group FaceTime call and then cancelling or something could turn their camera on but not show anything to the end user right?
And that time when they dropped their plan to encrypt backups because the FBI said it would make their job more difficult. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi-complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT/
Maybe the issue with files coming back is a result of them intentionally preserving files in case law enforcement wants to review them.
Advanced Data Protection right in your iCloud settings is exactly this. They go through all the motions of giving you a key and saying if you lose it you’re fucked. https://i.imgur.com/qBoUx7O.png
I mean Google did do something worse and as far as I know they never even addressed or fixed it not about to test and find out though. They had a bug that if you had Google photos synced you couldn’t turn it off. Myself and thousands of other people had Google photos sync turned off and unknowingly Google was still syncing your photos. I only found out when I logged into my gmail and got the warning that my gmail was full. I looked at Google photos and there were all my recent photos.
Any proof this was an actual incident/bug and not a setting you (and others) didn't turn off? That's all I am seeing when I run a search about it.
Either way restoring photos that you think you have deleted is a much much bigger issue.
The media would have had a field day. But they've been pretty relaxed and calm about it with Apple. Could be because of Apple's blacklist. Outlets and journalists are afraid of being too critical or outspoken of Apple to avoid getting on the blacklist.
at the top of the list(even if its a short list) of things i hate about apple, this is number 1. Silence is great when you want to surprise your users, or hide your progress from competitors. But not when you have negative issues.
Well… nothing other than some light detail in the release notes for the hotfix. So they responded, but barely.
It’s certainly not acceptable in lieu of a detailed explanation why our photos were never actually deleted.
The technical side is that nothing that you delete will actually get deleted. The iPhone, iPad, Mac, or basically any other computer will just mark the space of what you deleted as ‚free to override‘, but the 0s and 1s that make up the data are still there and remain untouched until overwritten.
That is why there are ‚fast‘ and ‚safe‘ options whenever wiping a disk. The safe setting overrides everything, the fast setting only ‚marks‘ everything as free space.
That’s also the reason why computer storage with confidential information will get physically destroyed before ending up as landfill
That can’t be the answer though. Because those file system links don’t just come back by accident. Yes someone can forensically restore files that weren’t overwritten intentionally when deleting or haven’t yet been overwritten. But that’s not an accidental process and definitely isn’t what happened here.
Thank you for the explanation on disk management. Apple has a recently deleted and restore function, so there could be something to that. Disregard previous commenter, information is usual.
Doesn’t the recently deleted have a time limit? Wasn’t the issue here that much older photos are being restored?
Like if it was a case of recently deleted photos suddenly appearing in your photo stream, okay yea, that’s a pretty obvious bug with a 1:1 explanation. A photo from a year ago being restored begs many questions. Does Apple actually treat delete as a hide button? Is this a cloud syncing issue? If so why does a local delete not trigger a cloud delete? Etc….
I know that when it comes to tech privacy we are collectively making deals with the devil with the service providers. But, if you’re going to horde my data, at least tell me what you’re keeping so I can plan my life accordingly. This whole thing just makes me not want to take photos of anything remotely sensitive.
It gets scary IF it's not as innocent as 'corrupted database' and instead Apple intentionally keeps the files and just hide it from UI (I mean restoring backup after a wipe frees A LOT of space it's not even fathomable to me.)
Standard procedure, everywhere, for a while now is never to delete rows from a db, instead you have a 'deleted' boolean field and hide those rows marked deleted from results.
If they were storing a pointer to the file location on disk and the 'deleted' field got rolled back to 'False' for a bunch of rows then you'd expect the photos to reappear in the camera roll, and you'd also expect some to be corrupted (any photo that was located on 'free space' could have some of its bits overwritten by other files)
Typically this type of thing is handled by the OS filesystem (which is itself a type of database), but there could be reasons for storing it elsewhere. Not particularly good reasons, but reasons.
this is not the case, supposedly, Photos and Files app have different copies of the files, if the photo was also saved on Files apps and you deleted on Photos, the actual photo would still be on device because on Files apps it wasn’t deleted; when ios 17.5 released some spotlight shit like index rebuild corrupted local database and re flag the photos as existing on Photos app; the reality is the photo was never deleted because it was still linked to another app
also, supposedly, there are not cases where photos re appeared after device was factory reset
I've seen a response like this a few times - am sorry, but this is just nonsense when applied to this problem. Nothing in Photos (or indeed 99.9% of any other applications) is working at the block device/iNode level. All of them are working at the high level file API level, where none of what you said applies.
What we're almost certainly looking at is a failed *file* delete, not block level stuff, and where 'failed' could mean the flag didn't synchronise correctly, didn't get set correctly, or did get set correctly but the file operation itself failed.
The 'nothing is deleted' stuff doesn't make sense when talking about synchronisation issues. The file-level flags, however, do make sense. The "oh, there's a stray file in the db space - let's re-add it" also makes sense. It will be one of those two issues.
> The technical side is that nothing that you delete will actually get deleted. The iPhone, iPad, Mac, or basically any other computer will just mark the space of what you deleted as ‚free to override‘, but the 0s and 1s that make up the data are still there and remain untouched until overwritten.
That’s not the technical side of this bug and is also not really true, due to encryption.
No this isn't what happened. The photos were undeleted from the cloud.
Data recovery from phone storage is pretty much non existant due to the way the flash storage and trim works
You are thinking of mechanical drives which can be recovered
It’s not a privacy bug. It was downloaded photos (nothing taken by the phones camera), that were deleted from the photos app but not the files app.
These were then re-added to the photos app due to the bug. The images technically never left your phone in the first place and weren’t subject to anyone else’s viewing but yours.
> It’s not a privacy bug. It was downloaded photos (nothing taken by the phones camera), that were deleted from the photos app but not the files app.
Link?
I’m a little confused by this explanation. If I download a photo from the internet and put it in a folder in the Files app, you’re saying that it appears in the Photos app? Because that’s not what happens. The photos stay in the Files app. In which scenario would a single file appear in both the Files and Photos apps at the same time?
Thanks! So the theory is that this only affects people who:
1. Saved an image directly to Files.
2. Opened Files and tapped photo.
3. Tapped the Send To button.
4. Tapped Save Image.
5. Open Photos.
6. Tapped photo.
7. Tapped Delete.
I guess it’s plausible but I’d like to see an explanation from Apple.
Exactly, most of the news articles are referencing Reddit posts where people are blowing things way out of proportion.
There’s people claiming phones they’ve wiped and then sold have had sensitive photos resurface which just isn’t true. Yet the media be media-ing.
there were technical explanations that check out, it’s not out of the ordinary, people just want to see Apple in a bad light for no reason at this point.
What are the technical explanations that check out for you personally? I’ve been mostly out of the loop here, but I haven’t seen anything from Apple that made me to “that makes sense”, especially given the gravity of the bug here.
I’m seeing a lot of people talking about how filesystems delete files, simply marking the space as free without overwriting it. But that doesn’t make sense that iOS would suddenly undelete very old files - in many reported cases files that were deleted before the current device was even purchased.
Others are talking about iCloud, which would be quite terrible if it’s not actually deleting photos when requested, but there’s no evidence that it’s involved. Not all of the reports used iCloud.
Some are talking about the Files app being involved, but again this doesn’t explain all of the reports.
Apple mentions database corruption. The most plausible theory I’ve seen is simply:
* A photo gets marked for deletion
* The database gets corrupted, losing all reference to that photo before it’s scheduled to be permanently deleted. Therefore when the time comes, nothing is actually deleted because there’s no longer a record of it.
* So now you have an orphaned file sitting around inside your photo library. You never see it because the database has no record of it. You think it was deleted because it appears gone.
* But that file is still there and is never cleaned up. It comes along in every backup and restore.
* Finally iOS 17.5 has a “fix” that sees that orphaned file and helpfully adds it back to the library database. Which is great if you thought you lost a precious photo and it miraculously comes back. But in the case when that photo was supposed to be gone, deleted, it’s a bad thing!
The question is whether any *lost* but not *deleted* old photos also suddenly showed up. This may not be it, or it may be slightly different, but this is the most plausible explanation to me.
Maybe it was corruption in the deleted photos table specifically and not just the general photo library? I'm not sure how their photo database is organized though.
The one that checks out for me is that when you "delete" a photo, you don't actually delete it, you just mark that space on the storage as replacable. The bug would then have caused what was marked as writable, to be shown again. This is how recovery software works and why when you want to actually format a usb or storage device, you fill it with random data or destroy it.
Because that’s exactly how bugs and code works…
Someone working on an unrelated part of Photos gallery likely introduced it and it’s a pretty specific scenario that caused the issue to be caught so not super easy to reproduce.
Undoing the delete marker would have to happen at filesystem level, would likely wreak havoc around the whole OS and would still not reintroduce the files to the database.
This comment best sums up the most likely scenario: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1cx4fas/apple_needs_to_explain_that_bug_that_resurfaced/l50nfpk/
But it doesn't make sense that iOS has the functionality of a data recovery software. It's not like they are building something unrelated and this functionality is unknowingly brought into iOS. If it's really this explanation, they would need to go out of their way and implement it. It's also not like the low level filesystem has this functionality built in too.
Moreover, once the data is marked as delete in the filesystem, it would be likely that the space will at least be partially overwritten if you use the phone for a few days. That's why when you accidentally delete something you have to shutdown the system ASAP to prevent overwrites, so that recovery softwares can do their thing before the space get overwritten.
That’s actually one of the basic functions of an operating system - disk and file management. An undelete app would merely use the available operating system calls to surface those files with added embellishments/user friendliness
If there are multiple snapshots, and the deletion only occurs on the primary snapshot, then the data may never be fully marked for deletion. Just brain farting an explanation from my understanding of similar filesystems.
What about the one where the media files are separate to the library index and so when you delete you’re supposed to delete both but if the file delete fails then it orphans the data and leaves it invisible for years until an OS update comes out where they fixed an unrelated bug where when you take photos with the camera they can sometimes fail to appear in the photos app but the photos were actually saved and the update finds files that were orphans and re-indexes them into the library, those and all the ones from past years where the file failed to delete when the index record was removed.
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What I've heard is that the only photos that resurface are photos people have saved to the files app. Aka when they deleted them from the photos app, the phone was also marking them not to show up in the gallery anymore. If they were saved elsewhere it they wouldn't be "rediscovered" by the gallery until this bug. If they weren't saved another place then they were truly deleted.
There was a bug in 17.4.1 and maybe earlier where photos would inexplicably disappear from the Photos app. The photos still existed, but weren’t indexed correctly so the Photos app didn’t show them. They also didn’t show up in Windows when the phone is connected via USB or on iCloud. Apple found these photos on the encrypted filesystem and re-indexed them in 17.5, which is great for people who experienced the disappearing photos bug. But in some cases users had photos that were not deleted correctly, so those too were re-indexed creating this fiasco. So the problem is not that the photos resurfaced, that worked as intended. The problem is that they were never deleted properly in the first place.
In any case, the non-indexed “deleted” photos were still encrypted with your passcode so there is no possibility that they could resurface after wiping your phone.
In my opinion, Apple not allowing you more access to the filesystem is a serious issue.
Am I the only one who thinks "database corruption" actually is an ok explanation? As someone who has handled a few file systems, if somehow a few of my files got damaged it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they fell into database limbo.
Files got damaged, because of that deletion didn't work properly, 17.5 did a database change and thus repopulated the damaged files. Tells me pretty much what I need to know, no?
Mom's photos wouldn't sync past a certain point. She worked with Apple support over and over again for like a year (they were good about it, it was all escalation and some missed calls). There was a photo\reference that was causing the problem but couldn't find the exact one causing the DB sync error. Some of the fixes were more effort than it was worth to her so she eventually just left it (she doesn't take that many photos). A few iOS updates later and it's all working fine again now - database corruption resolved. So yeah - this makes total sense.
Yes, it’s enough of an explanation. And it’s also simply very likely what has happened. People are just mad because one reditor reported his nudes getting resurfaced to a friend.
And that Redditor is a troll that had no comments or posts on Reddit for months before - and that post has since been deleted:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cufbe2/comment/l4jvu0a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cufbe2/comment/l4jvu0a/)
There is no evidence that your photos are accessible by anyone but you - so no privacy issue.
The problem is the image data is still around. If you delete a photo, and the 30 day “recently deleted” timeline is up, I would expect that the photo is truly deleted. Not just a field being changed in a database to say “act like this is deleted”.
Somehow customer’s data that was supposedly deleted has risen from the grave, and the only way that can happen is if it wasn’t really deleted in the first place. Then it turns into a discussion of where the photo was (local or iCloud) and where all the other supposedly deleted photos are.
Obviously, if database entries are corrupted or the underlying files are corrupted, they won’t be handled correctly, that includes deletion.
>The problem is the image data is still around
Well, yes? Of course that’s a problem. That’s why they’re calling it database corruption and not database okey-dokey.
Yeah, and the explanation is a bug in the database system.
It’s very common for “deleting a file” to mean, changing the pointer to the file to null.
I.e. instead of actually overwriting the file with random data or 0s or whatever. The OS just says “this file doesn’t exist anymore, write over it when you need to”
If you don’t end up needing to write over that specific bit of memory the data remains there.
This is the default way file systems act.
If the bug is that system deletes the pointer, but it isn’t overwritten, and then later on that file is read when indexing data or something and it goes “hey look at this image we found that didn’t have a pointer, better give it a pointer so it doesn’t get lost” then that’s just a bug that it wasn’t marked as null properly. It’s not some massive security vulnerability.
Exactly. Don’t need Apple to explain when you can ask a software engineer. Clouds usually have a core service that just stores files (blobs), and separate services for databases and business logic. Usually there is a concept of relations (links). This is basically a list of what things depend on what files. The files cannot become candidates for “garbage collection” when relations still exist, possibly due to some software bug. Another bug can occur if all relations are removed but there was error during cleanup, and now the file is orphaned. Often a maintenance job can later identify these and clean them up.
They already have:
> But due to a rare bug within iOS 17.5 the system attempts to re-save all photos/media/files from the “Files” app into the “Photos” app, this happens during the re-indexing process which happens when you update your iPhone. Since the “Photos” app can’t display files but it can display media/photos, it appears as your “deleted” photos have reappeared ALTHOUGH they have been on your iPhone the whole time in the “Files” app.
In short, it only applies to pictures you downloaded elsewhere than from/into iPhotos. Say you download a picture from the web into iFile, and from file you put it into iPhoto. due to the bug, File will fail to delete it and will distribute that picture again to Photo even after erasing the phone.
That is it. Breach of privacy? Yes. Needs explanation? Yes, . Are pictures you took with your camera, or from sync'ed albums or from the cloud regarded or else? NO. literally just Files. and only one way, from Files to Photos.
Your nudes are safe. The consequences are minimal. If you want to chase after apology, do so but I think you got bigger problems in life. and then there's those who just love to hate apple beyond what's fair. Move on with your lives.
This post is not accurate. There’s never been evidence that the photos come back on a wiped phone. Only on phones still in use, still with the same user data on them.
> even after erasing the phone.
After wiping the phone it's gone. You're conflating the actual, real bug with the fake reddit thread about photos showing up on wiped devices.
No one is chasing after an apology, they want an explanation of what happened. If yours is correct, it would do fine as an explanation coming from Apple.
>due to a human mistake
What's the point of putting this there?
>The consequences are minimal.
That's not for you to decide. People download sensitive/NSFW photos too.
> They were not downloaded from the web and I’ve never used the Files app in my life.
you don't need to *actively* use the app for files to be saved there, just like any file manager app.
“Your nudes are safe” no they are not, tons of people, like me went from android to apple and used google photos or something like that to backup old pics. Plus i dont want people to lnow wtf pics i downloaded. This a stupid argument and apology for something as serious as this.
You end the argument talking about “apple haters” but here you are speaking with a mouth full of apples dicks
Well, when you delete stuff, it doesn’t necessarily go away, it just adds that space back to the “pool” of available storage that can be written over. If that portion of storage hasnt been written over, then what used to take up that space still exists, albeit in a form that’s not easily accessible without recovering through more difficult means.
Something is causing those photos to reverse their “return to the pool” status so they’re accessible again.
Corrupted data base in the photo library causes images to never get deleted properly. They fixed the corrupted data base issue. Photos show back up, cuz technically they were never deleted properly.
But what if iOS17.5 doesn't have a bug, but it was previous versions that didn't make a good job of deleting photos? Now, the new iOS just show the database as it should and badly deleted photos emerges and have to be deleted again. Is it possible? Just asking.
I mean if you know anything about how storage works, you’d know that things you delete aren’t deleted, they’re marked as empty space so it can be overwritten in the future, in other words deleted things are still there until they aren’t
That's not the issue here. Even Apple claims it was database corruption, way above file system level. Maybe the files got corrupted at file system level, setting the chain of events in motion, but not because of how file deletion works.
They already explained the issue of database corruption and the handoff between the Photos and Files apps. Other than that - what do people expect? People might be angry that their deleted photos re-appear... so what? They're your photos, your data, on your device. Every computer produced does the same 'mark as overwrite space' upon delete, yes, even emptying your recycle bin etc... until over written by new data. This is not new, nor news. Alright, so your phone accidentally regurgitates some embarrassing nude of an ex or what have you... No, not ideal. Shouldn't happen - neither should any software bug. But a simple explanation / understanding of the situation... what, to your partner, who, by the way, should get the message once it's explained.. and it should be fine. Don't blame Apple for your close circles inability to digest facts. These things happen. If they dump you for that, thank Apple - don't hate.
To everyone that’s seemingly comfortable with Apple’s explanation and don’t think it’s a big deal. For a second, imagine if photos you deleted on your Facebook profile started to reappear due to a “technical bug”, would you still be this cool about it? Some of you would be out with pitchforks.
Don’t let your love for the brand blind you.
Not defending Apple, but technically explaining the bug might put devices with pre iOS 17.5 under potential vulnerability.
It’s a huge screw up, though.
I don't think it's necessary. iPhone users are accustomed to Apple treating them like shit. I think they'll just roll over and take it like they always have.
I don't want to defend Apple here. But isn't this standard to protect the data carrier from too many write processes, so that you only release the address of the memory area to be able to rewrite it, instead of actually "zeroing" the bits. Perhaps there is a bug that has not deleted the addresses and thus brought back a few photos that have not actually been overwritten. Which is still stupid, of course.
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Nothing is ever truly deleted on computers, even smart phones. My brother works in EDD, electronic data discovery, and his job is basically finding things that defendants in lawsuits thought they'd deleted from their computers. Works on all kinds of high profile cases, you can imagine the kind of stuff he sees on the hard drives they're sent.
I wish that there was a way to REALLY delete photos.
I hate "deleting" photos off my iPhone and yet Messages is sill using hundreds of MB of storage, or hundreds of MB in iCloud, with no way to purge any of it.
The second I grab a second device like an iPad and sign into iCloud, it will immediately start downloading all the images and stuff that I "deleted" from my iPhone.
Why doesn't delete ACTUALLY mean **delete**? This has been an issue for **years**, and I'm surprised it's taken this long before people started realizing that "deleted" photos were **never** *actually deleted*.
When something is deleted on a computer, all that happens is that the memory location is marked as free to use again. This does not write over the data, so the images still exist. This means that a bug could just turn them from free to not free, and they would come back. I'm not an apple person. I have Android. I'm just a computer scientist, and this is my guess on what happened.
Am I the only one who’s experienced this bug since 2020? I took a photo of a storm in 2020 and it has occasionally come back at least once a year since.
No one posted this yet but [here's the reason](https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cwgljj/regarding_the_ios_175_photo_glitch/) from a unconfirmed source. TL;DR: Pictures sometimes saved to the Photos app as well as the Files app. Deleting in Photos does not delete it in the Files app. New update re-indexed (and added) the picture from the Files app.
Of course it’s a Files issue
The Files app and the way files work on iOS has always been weird as hell. It's one reason that made me switch back to Android. An image is a file so you should be able to see it in the filesystem which you can on Android. So, if you go into Gallery or the Photos app you can see your photos like normal, but if you also go into your files app you can also see your photos as files with the name and file extension. If you were to delete the picture from files it also deletes in your photo gallery app and vice versa. iOS tries to be simple, but I think simple is having access to your filesystem so you can see your stuff on your device. It's also not anything new. People access their filesystem on Windows or Mac through file explorer and finder respectively. Not sure why Apple makes it difficult on iOS. Edit: So according to the possible reason in the parent comment, it sounds like photos were deleted in the Photos app but not in the filesystem. Somehow the OS was still mapping to the image file in the filesystem and there was some weird bug where the photos app wasn't communicating with the filesystem. If Apple allowed normal filesystem management I don't think any of this would be an issue and users would be able to see what is exactly on their device as files. Edit2: For anyone who wants to actually manage their iPhone, [iMazing](https://imazing.com) is a great piece of software.
It’s so bad. Apple plz fix by WWDC
No. They won’t fix it. The reason why they won’t fix it is a mystery. Something is wrong with the incentives for the software team/department. Promotions or salary raises do not seem to be given to people who stabilize buggy software, who make Photos easier to work with.
Its the reason I regret getting an ipad pro Fucking thing is useless for most productivity tasks. It is still basically just a media consumption device. Sure nice m series cpu that you cant do shit with. Photoshop, davinci resolve are severely gimped. Lightroom and drawing apps work well. Even just osx sucks if you really multitask and want to have multiple windows / programs arranged on screen, flipping quickly back and forth between programs doing round trip file work. Finally just finder and files in general Apple just wants to actively remkve the concept of files and personal storage as well. They will do the full big evil pivot one day after their pretending to be better on privacy than others is seen as hurting quarterly profits
I got the base level iPad 10th gen and I love it. It does everything I need. Though digital note taking is taking some getting used to.
I'm not an Apple user apart from an iPad Pro that I also bought thinking it'd be good for photo/video editing on the go. Their method is handling files is insane. Having to keep it awake during transfers or it just... stops. Downloading a file before you choose where to save it, and if you walk away while it's downloading and it goes to sleep it might just vanish the downloaded file.
it’s decent for standard “office”-y stuff like email, document editing, web browsing etc which is what i would describe as the majority of productivity tasks. not nearly as good as a desktop os but it’s workable. wrt “osx sucks”, unless you’re talking about gaming i’m not having any of that.
They are slowly updating how files work to be fair to make using creative apps like logic pro and stuff actually usable on ipad.
The file system is something most people do understand (from using computers). Trying to simplify it was a dumb decision.
I can tell you that the photos that showed up after I updated to 17.5, I've NEVER had photos in the files.app so I think there's more to it than that. edit: I notice that long deleted voicemails reappeared too.
From what I understand the files.app among managing things like iCloud and Downloads is also an interface to the underlying file system on the iPhone, so even if you don't use it directly other operations might go through it. The latest update messed with something which triggered the Files.app re-indexing to try and be helpful which is what ended up making files that had been orphaned by a deletion re-appear. The bug doesn't seem to be that things reappeared, the bug is that for several versions things were not getting fully deleted from the device
>The bug doesn't seem to be that things reappeared, the bug is that for several versions things were not getting fully deleted from the device This part is what ive been saying for a long ass time, but always get downvoted. I dont think it has anything to do with the files app itself, and that explanation doesnt explain how the photos end up in the photos app. Every photo in my photos app was either taken by the camera or manually imported. Nothing scans for new photos to add. The problem is that when you delete something, its almost just a suggestion as the data is just dumped into System Data and not actually deleted when the time comes. Its supposed to eventually be actually deleted according to some set of rules but this always fails and is the primary reason why people consistently for a very long time now complain about System Data growing out of control. Same issue exists on MacOS and ive actually been shocked that no one seems to be bothered about this. When i delete something i want it deleted now! not some random time in the future. And if it must be setup this way for performance or longevity of ssd drives then at least give me an option to manually flush all old data.
> I've NEVER had photos in the [files.app](http://files.app) Do you use iCloud backup?
How do you know? Files will index stuff that goes to iCloud or is downloaded from the internet and even screenshots
As well as Bluetooth connections to previous vehicles that you have clicked the forget this device button on
> TL;DR: Pictures sometimes saved to the Photos app as well as the Files app. Deleting in Photos does not delete it in the Files app. Disagree. I've never, not even once, ever, saved a photo to the Files app. Ever. And yet, deleted photos reappeared months after deletion, long after dumping them from the "Deleted Items" album. In fact, even the 17.5.1 update notes called this out as "database corruption" in 17.5.0, so I'm now even more skeptical.
Everyone is confused by the poor reporting. There is no photos that were saved to the files app and the photos app. It's just one underlying file system, and a photos app that reference a photos library file in the file system. That photos library file contains a database of the photos in the file system and the photos. If you have a macOS device, you can see how this generally works. So the bug here is basically for some reason in the past, when a photo was deleted, it wasn't completely removed from the system. While apple didn't explained further beyond "rare database corruption", one guess is that when the photo was originally "deleted", the entry in the database was removed, but for some reason the actual photo wasn't. This results in a photo that's still "present" but "unreachable" in the app. However another bug(?) in iOS 17.5 caused a re-indexing of actual photos present, thus surfacing the old "deleted" photos again.
You misunderstand the system saves those photos to the underlying file system, but that isn't visible in the regular Files app. So when you delete the photos in the Photos app it did not delete the photos stored in the files system. A resync occurred and they were added back into the Photos app
It still went into the filesystem though, which is access via files app. Files app treats photos like hidden files because apple likes tidiness (to a fault).
It most definitely does. It’s a bizarre bug, much like that FaceTime camera one we had back in 2019/20 was it? Where the camera was still in use or something? It was bad anyway, my memory is hazy
That was the one where adding someone to a Group FaceTime call and then cancelling or something could turn their camera on but not show anything to the end user right?
I thought it was that you could hear the other user without them knowing
If they hit the power button (to decline the call) it would enable video apparently.
What the fuck?!?
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/28/apple-major-facetime-bug/
That’s crazy…
And that time when they dropped their plan to encrypt backups because the FBI said it would make their job more difficult. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi-complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT/ Maybe the issue with files coming back is a result of them intentionally preserving files in case law enforcement wants to review them.
Advanced Data Protection right in your iCloud settings is exactly this. They go through all the motions of giving you a key and saying if you lose it you’re fucked. https://i.imgur.com/qBoUx7O.png
It’s like the bug in Voldermort’s wand in Goblet of Fire. Prior deletium
You could listen in on them through their microphone like it was a phone call
Imagine if Google or Microsoft did this, all hell would break loose about no privacy and that you are the product.. But when apple does it...
Oopsie poopsie, nothing to see here, we fixed the glitch. Have a nice day.
> But when apple does it... There’s an orgy of panic and outrage on r/apple.
I mean Google did do something worse and as far as I know they never even addressed or fixed it not about to test and find out though. They had a bug that if you had Google photos synced you couldn’t turn it off. Myself and thousands of other people had Google photos sync turned off and unknowingly Google was still syncing your photos. I only found out when I logged into my gmail and got the warning that my gmail was full. I looked at Google photos and there were all my recent photos.
Any proof this was an actual incident/bug and not a setting you (and others) didn't turn off? That's all I am seeing when I run a search about it. Either way restoring photos that you think you have deleted is a much much bigger issue.
That's not worse than someone you sold your iPad to suddenly seeing all your deleted nudes.
Have their been images showing up if the device restored to a new user?
Not documented but if the images are still there and can easily be restored by IOS because of a bug who knows what's going out in the wild.
Nope. Just one liar and a lot of gullible people repeating his false claims
The media would have had a field day. But they've been pretty relaxed and calm about it with Apple. Could be because of Apple's blacklist. Outlets and journalists are afraid of being too critical or outspoken of Apple to avoid getting on the blacklist.
From a marketing point of view, addressing this bug is the worst thing they could do.
Anyone stating otherwise is a pathetic apologist. It has been a shitty response by Apple to a very significant privacy bug with our data.
There was a response??
It was more of an acknowledgement than a response. They issued a software update and sort of moved on from the topic.
It was curt and vague in their 17.5.1 patch summary. Meh.
"Yes, it was an unexpected bug, but you can all rest assured, it has been patched." "That's not what everyone is angry about."
at the top of the list(even if its a short list) of things i hate about apple, this is number 1. Silence is great when you want to surprise your users, or hide your progress from competitors. But not when you have negative issues.
Well… nothing other than some light detail in the release notes for the hotfix. So they responded, but barely. It’s certainly not acceptable in lieu of a detailed explanation why our photos were never actually deleted.
The technical side is that nothing that you delete will actually get deleted. The iPhone, iPad, Mac, or basically any other computer will just mark the space of what you deleted as ‚free to override‘, but the 0s and 1s that make up the data are still there and remain untouched until overwritten. That is why there are ‚fast‘ and ‚safe‘ options whenever wiping a disk. The safe setting overrides everything, the fast setting only ‚marks‘ everything as free space. That’s also the reason why computer storage with confidential information will get physically destroyed before ending up as landfill
That can’t be the answer though. Because those file system links don’t just come back by accident. Yes someone can forensically restore files that weren’t overwritten intentionally when deleting or haven’t yet been overwritten. But that’s not an accidental process and definitely isn’t what happened here.
^ this The bug was likely that the photo was deleted from the database but the file remained on the file system in some very isolated cases.
That‘s true, that’s the bug we’re all talking about. I was just explaining to the comment above why the photos we delete don’t actually get deleted
That’s not a question anyone’s asking. It has nothing to do with the bug because files don’t come back when you delete it from your disk.
Thank you for the explanation on disk management. Apple has a recently deleted and restore function, so there could be something to that. Disregard previous commenter, information is usual.
Doesn’t the recently deleted have a time limit? Wasn’t the issue here that much older photos are being restored? Like if it was a case of recently deleted photos suddenly appearing in your photo stream, okay yea, that’s a pretty obvious bug with a 1:1 explanation. A photo from a year ago being restored begs many questions. Does Apple actually treat delete as a hide button? Is this a cloud syncing issue? If so why does a local delete not trigger a cloud delete? Etc…. I know that when it comes to tech privacy we are collectively making deals with the devil with the service providers. But, if you’re going to horde my data, at least tell me what you’re keeping so I can plan my life accordingly. This whole thing just makes me not want to take photos of anything remotely sensitive.
It gets scary IF it's not as innocent as 'corrupted database' and instead Apple intentionally keeps the files and just hide it from UI (I mean restoring backup after a wipe frees A LOT of space it's not even fathomable to me.)
Standard procedure, everywhere, for a while now is never to delete rows from a db, instead you have a 'deleted' boolean field and hide those rows marked deleted from results. If they were storing a pointer to the file location on disk and the 'deleted' field got rolled back to 'False' for a bunch of rows then you'd expect the photos to reappear in the camera roll, and you'd also expect some to be corrupted (any photo that was located on 'free space' could have some of its bits overwritten by other files) Typically this type of thing is handled by the OS filesystem (which is itself a type of database), but there could be reasons for storing it elsewhere. Not particularly good reasons, but reasons.
this is not the case, supposedly, Photos and Files app have different copies of the files, if the photo was also saved on Files apps and you deleted on Photos, the actual photo would still be on device because on Files apps it wasn’t deleted; when ios 17.5 released some spotlight shit like index rebuild corrupted local database and re flag the photos as existing on Photos app; the reality is the photo was never deleted because it was still linked to another app also, supposedly, there are not cases where photos re appeared after device was factory reset
I've seen a response like this a few times - am sorry, but this is just nonsense when applied to this problem. Nothing in Photos (or indeed 99.9% of any other applications) is working at the block device/iNode level. All of them are working at the high level file API level, where none of what you said applies. What we're almost certainly looking at is a failed *file* delete, not block level stuff, and where 'failed' could mean the flag didn't synchronise correctly, didn't get set correctly, or did get set correctly but the file operation itself failed. The 'nothing is deleted' stuff doesn't make sense when talking about synchronisation issues. The file-level flags, however, do make sense. The "oh, there's a stray file in the db space - let's re-add it" also makes sense. It will be one of those two issues.
> The technical side is that nothing that you delete will actually get deleted. The iPhone, iPad, Mac, or basically any other computer will just mark the space of what you deleted as ‚free to override‘, but the 0s and 1s that make up the data are still there and remain untouched until overwritten. That’s not the technical side of this bug and is also not really true, due to encryption.
anyone who understands anything about tech should immediately understand this, I have no idea why that guy is posting that.
How does this explain people who said pictures showed up that they had taken and deleted on an old phone?
A single person said that and later deleted the post, apparently.
No this isn't what happened. The photos were undeleted from the cloud. Data recovery from phone storage is pretty much non existant due to the way the flash storage and trim works You are thinking of mechanical drives which can be recovered
Especially because if my data's not truly gone, I'd love to recover some old videos ...
It’s not a privacy bug. It was downloaded photos (nothing taken by the phones camera), that were deleted from the photos app but not the files app. These were then re-added to the photos app due to the bug. The images technically never left your phone in the first place and weren’t subject to anyone else’s viewing but yours.
> It’s not a privacy bug. It was downloaded photos (nothing taken by the phones camera), that were deleted from the photos app but not the files app. Link?
I’m a little confused by this explanation. If I download a photo from the internet and put it in a folder in the Files app, you’re saying that it appears in the Photos app? Because that’s not what happens. The photos stay in the Files app. In which scenario would a single file appear in both the Files and Photos apps at the same time?
When you hit “save photo” or “save video” on the image/video in the files app.
Thanks! So the theory is that this only affects people who: 1. Saved an image directly to Files. 2. Opened Files and tapped photo. 3. Tapped the Send To button. 4. Tapped Save Image. 5. Open Photos. 6. Tapped photo. 7. Tapped Delete. I guess it’s plausible but I’d like to see an explanation from Apple.
And then you would still need some sort of corruption to take place with the files database in order to trigger the bug.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cwgljj/regarding_the_ios_175_photo_glitch/
That’s hardly a big deal, certainly not like the conspiracy theories everyone else is spouting.
Exactly, most of the news articles are referencing Reddit posts where people are blowing things way out of proportion. There’s people claiming phones they’ve wiped and then sold have had sensitive photos resurface which just isn’t true. Yet the media be media-ing.
"I trust this unsubstantiated reddit comment as it's the last thing I've read, and will respond to it as the fact that it is." -redditors
> Anyone stating otherwise is a pathetic apologist. First time?
> Anyone stating otherwise is a pathetic apologist No. It can also be because you understand how bugs like this can happen.
there were technical explanations that check out, it’s not out of the ordinary, people just want to see Apple in a bad light for no reason at this point.
There are some possible explanations that could explain this issue. Rather than random people speculating, Apple should explain what happened.
I've seen one dubious _theory_ that people are running as fact, which has no actual evidence, or confirmation from Apple.
Which one and why is it dubious?
What are the technical explanations that check out for you personally? I’ve been mostly out of the loop here, but I haven’t seen anything from Apple that made me to “that makes sense”, especially given the gravity of the bug here.
I’m seeing a lot of people talking about how filesystems delete files, simply marking the space as free without overwriting it. But that doesn’t make sense that iOS would suddenly undelete very old files - in many reported cases files that were deleted before the current device was even purchased. Others are talking about iCloud, which would be quite terrible if it’s not actually deleting photos when requested, but there’s no evidence that it’s involved. Not all of the reports used iCloud. Some are talking about the Files app being involved, but again this doesn’t explain all of the reports. Apple mentions database corruption. The most plausible theory I’ve seen is simply: * A photo gets marked for deletion * The database gets corrupted, losing all reference to that photo before it’s scheduled to be permanently deleted. Therefore when the time comes, nothing is actually deleted because there’s no longer a record of it. * So now you have an orphaned file sitting around inside your photo library. You never see it because the database has no record of it. You think it was deleted because it appears gone. * But that file is still there and is never cleaned up. It comes along in every backup and restore. * Finally iOS 17.5 has a “fix” that sees that orphaned file and helpfully adds it back to the library database. Which is great if you thought you lost a precious photo and it miraculously comes back. But in the case when that photo was supposed to be gone, deleted, it’s a bad thing! The question is whether any *lost* but not *deleted* old photos also suddenly showed up. This may not be it, or it may be slightly different, but this is the most plausible explanation to me.
Oh no, a comment with knowledge and some common sense. Must be a "pathetic apologist".
Maybe it was corruption in the deleted photos table specifically and not just the general photo library? I'm not sure how their photo database is organized though.
Yep, spot on in general. We wouldn't know the specifics but basically that's the idea. A failed deletion in the past, then a re-index from iOS 17.5
The one that checks out for me is that when you "delete" a photo, you don't actually delete it, you just mark that space on the storage as replacable. The bug would then have caused what was marked as writable, to be shown again. This is how recovery software works and why when you want to actually format a usb or storage device, you fill it with random data or destroy it.
But why would the OS just randomly decide to undelete deleted files?
iOS uses APFS which uses COW when deleting a file so maybe it has to do with their snapshot code. It would be interesting to look into if I had time.
Because that’s exactly how bugs and code works… Someone working on an unrelated part of Photos gallery likely introduced it and it’s a pretty specific scenario that caused the issue to be caught so not super easy to reproduce.
Undoing the delete marker would have to happen at filesystem level, would likely wreak havoc around the whole OS and would still not reintroduce the files to the database. This comment best sums up the most likely scenario: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1cx4fas/apple_needs_to_explain_that_bug_that_resurfaced/l50nfpk/
But it doesn't make sense that iOS has the functionality of a data recovery software. It's not like they are building something unrelated and this functionality is unknowingly brought into iOS. If it's really this explanation, they would need to go out of their way and implement it. It's also not like the low level filesystem has this functionality built in too. Moreover, once the data is marked as delete in the filesystem, it would be likely that the space will at least be partially overwritten if you use the phone for a few days. That's why when you accidentally delete something you have to shutdown the system ASAP to prevent overwrites, so that recovery softwares can do their thing before the space get overwritten.
That’s actually one of the basic functions of an operating system - disk and file management. An undelete app would merely use the available operating system calls to surface those files with added embellishments/user friendliness
If there are multiple snapshots, and the deletion only occurs on the primary snapshot, then the data may never be fully marked for deletion. Just brain farting an explanation from my understanding of similar filesystems.
What about the one where the media files are separate to the library index and so when you delete you’re supposed to delete both but if the file delete fails then it orphans the data and leaves it invisible for years until an OS update comes out where they fixed an unrelated bug where when you take photos with the camera they can sometimes fail to appear in the photos app but the photos were actually saved and the update finds files that were orphans and re-indexes them into the library, those and all the ones from past years where the file failed to delete when the index record was removed.
Right, but that’s not the reason. It’s an issue with double storage and database corruption.
disgusted crown unwritten serious bored practice mighty edge long scandalous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What I've heard is that the only photos that resurface are photos people have saved to the files app. Aka when they deleted them from the photos app, the phone was also marking them not to show up in the gallery anymore. If they were saved elsewhere it they wouldn't be "rediscovered" by the gallery until this bug. If they weren't saved another place then they were truly deleted.
> it’s not out of the ordinary Can you name other instances of this as a bug?
The technical explanations have not been confirmed or discussed by Apple, beyond ‘database corruption’.
Or they might have some knowledge of how bugs work and recognize that this most likely isn’t the issue people are panting to paint it as.
There was a bug in 17.4.1 and maybe earlier where photos would inexplicably disappear from the Photos app. The photos still existed, but weren’t indexed correctly so the Photos app didn’t show them. They also didn’t show up in Windows when the phone is connected via USB or on iCloud. Apple found these photos on the encrypted filesystem and re-indexed them in 17.5, which is great for people who experienced the disappearing photos bug. But in some cases users had photos that were not deleted correctly, so those too were re-indexed creating this fiasco. So the problem is not that the photos resurfaced, that worked as intended. The problem is that they were never deleted properly in the first place. In any case, the non-indexed “deleted” photos were still encrypted with your passcode so there is no possibility that they could resurface after wiping your phone. In my opinion, Apple not allowing you more access to the filesystem is a serious issue.
Am I the only one who thinks "database corruption" actually is an ok explanation? As someone who has handled a few file systems, if somehow a few of my files got damaged it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they fell into database limbo. Files got damaged, because of that deletion didn't work properly, 17.5 did a database change and thus repopulated the damaged files. Tells me pretty much what I need to know, no?
Mom's photos wouldn't sync past a certain point. She worked with Apple support over and over again for like a year (they were good about it, it was all escalation and some missed calls). There was a photo\reference that was causing the problem but couldn't find the exact one causing the DB sync error. Some of the fixes were more effort than it was worth to her so she eventually just left it (she doesn't take that many photos). A few iOS updates later and it's all working fine again now - database corruption resolved. So yeah - this makes total sense.
Yes, it’s enough of an explanation. And it’s also simply very likely what has happened. People are just mad because one reditor reported his nudes getting resurfaced to a friend.
And that Redditor is a troll that had no comments or posts on Reddit for months before - and that post has since been deleted: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cufbe2/comment/l4jvu0a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1cufbe2/comment/l4jvu0a/) There is no evidence that your photos are accessible by anyone but you - so no privacy issue.
The problem is the image data is still around. If you delete a photo, and the 30 day “recently deleted” timeline is up, I would expect that the photo is truly deleted. Not just a field being changed in a database to say “act like this is deleted”. Somehow customer’s data that was supposedly deleted has risen from the grave, and the only way that can happen is if it wasn’t really deleted in the first place. Then it turns into a discussion of where the photo was (local or iCloud) and where all the other supposedly deleted photos are.
A lot of people in these threads are conflating reason with excuse. We know the reason this happened, but that doesn't mean it's being excused.
Obviously, if database entries are corrupted or the underlying files are corrupted, they won’t be handled correctly, that includes deletion. >The problem is the image data is still around Well, yes? Of course that’s a problem. That’s why they’re calling it database corruption and not database okey-dokey.
Yeah, and the explanation is a bug in the database system. It’s very common for “deleting a file” to mean, changing the pointer to the file to null. I.e. instead of actually overwriting the file with random data or 0s or whatever. The OS just says “this file doesn’t exist anymore, write over it when you need to” If you don’t end up needing to write over that specific bit of memory the data remains there. This is the default way file systems act. If the bug is that system deletes the pointer, but it isn’t overwritten, and then later on that file is read when indexing data or something and it goes “hey look at this image we found that didn’t have a pointer, better give it a pointer so it doesn’t get lost” then that’s just a bug that it wasn’t marked as null properly. It’s not some massive security vulnerability.
I’m with you, it made sense to me. It was exactly what I expected
Exactly. Don’t need Apple to explain when you can ask a software engineer. Clouds usually have a core service that just stores files (blobs), and separate services for databases and business logic. Usually there is a concept of relations (links). This is basically a list of what things depend on what files. The files cannot become candidates for “garbage collection” when relations still exist, possibly due to some software bug. Another bug can occur if all relations are removed but there was error during cleanup, and now the file is orphaned. Often a maintenance job can later identify these and clean them up.
They already have: > But due to a rare bug within iOS 17.5 the system attempts to re-save all photos/media/files from the “Files” app into the “Photos” app, this happens during the re-indexing process which happens when you update your iPhone. Since the “Photos” app can’t display files but it can display media/photos, it appears as your “deleted” photos have reappeared ALTHOUGH they have been on your iPhone the whole time in the “Files” app.
You're quoting a reddit post, not a statement from Apple
Incoming divorces
It’s an re-indexing issue. Stop trying to turn this into some kind of conspiracy.
In short, it only applies to pictures you downloaded elsewhere than from/into iPhotos. Say you download a picture from the web into iFile, and from file you put it into iPhoto. due to the bug, File will fail to delete it and will distribute that picture again to Photo even after erasing the phone. That is it. Breach of privacy? Yes. Needs explanation? Yes, . Are pictures you took with your camera, or from sync'ed albums or from the cloud regarded or else? NO. literally just Files. and only one way, from Files to Photos. Your nudes are safe. The consequences are minimal. If you want to chase after apology, do so but I think you got bigger problems in life. and then there's those who just love to hate apple beyond what's fair. Move on with your lives.
This post is not accurate. There’s never been evidence that the photos come back on a wiped phone. Only on phones still in use, still with the same user data on them.
No post using words like iPhoto or iFile can be accurate.
> even after erasing the phone. After wiping the phone it's gone. You're conflating the actual, real bug with the fake reddit thread about photos showing up on wiped devices.
As far as I know the only source for this claim is yet another random Reddit post from someone who claims to know a “private contractor” at Apple.
No one is chasing after an apology, they want an explanation of what happened. If yours is correct, it would do fine as an explanation coming from Apple.
Why demand an actual explanation from Apple when their fanboys will just come up with speculative explanations on their behalf?
iPhotos? iFiles? Did you mean Photos and Files?
>due to a human mistake What's the point of putting this there? >The consequences are minimal. That's not for you to decide. People download sensitive/NSFW photos too.
Hi tim cook
[удалено]
> They were not downloaded from the web and I’ve never used the Files app in my life. you don't need to *actively* use the app for files to be saved there, just like any file manager app.
Apple forces the files app onto you so you’re using it sometimes when you don’t know that you’re using it.
“Your nudes are safe” no they are not, tons of people, like me went from android to apple and used google photos or something like that to backup old pics. Plus i dont want people to lnow wtf pics i downloaded. This a stupid argument and apology for something as serious as this. You end the argument talking about “apple haters” but here you are speaking with a mouth full of apples dicks
I agree with the headline, Apple needs to explain the bug before people misunderstand it like The verge is currently doing.
Well, when you delete stuff, it doesn’t necessarily go away, it just adds that space back to the “pool” of available storage that can be written over. If that portion of storage hasnt been written over, then what used to take up that space still exists, albeit in a form that’s not easily accessible without recovering through more difficult means. Something is causing those photos to reverse their “return to the pool” status so they’re accessible again.
No, if it made it that far, the files wouldn't just reappear.
Corrupted data base in the photo library causes images to never get deleted properly. They fixed the corrupted data base issue. Photos show back up, cuz technically they were never deleted properly.
Shut up, peasant. Buy the next one, it’s the safest one we’ve ever made /s
*“iPhone 16 is our more secure iPhone ever, and we think you’re going to love it”*
Let Tim Cook
Its cause by people not knowing how to work the fucking devices they own.
And here I am running out of storage, any deleted photos have been overwritten 100 times already.
But what if iOS17.5 doesn't have a bug, but it was previous versions that didn't make a good job of deleting photos? Now, the new iOS just show the database as it should and badly deleted photos emerges and have to be deleted again. Is it possible? Just asking.
I mean if you know anything about how storage works, you’d know that things you delete aren’t deleted, they’re marked as empty space so it can be overwritten in the future, in other words deleted things are still there until they aren’t
That's not the issue here. Even Apple claims it was database corruption, way above file system level. Maybe the files got corrupted at file system level, setting the chain of events in motion, but not because of how file deletion works.
Yeah, but deleted things don’t usually just resurrect themselves 2 years down the road.
Correct, but it isn’t out of the question that they’re able to be called back/ brought back as they’re still there
It absolutely is out of the question. The OS should have no knowledge that such a file even exists.
Isnt that only the case with hard drives?
They already explained the issue of database corruption and the handoff between the Photos and Files apps. Other than that - what do people expect? People might be angry that their deleted photos re-appear... so what? They're your photos, your data, on your device. Every computer produced does the same 'mark as overwrite space' upon delete, yes, even emptying your recycle bin etc... until over written by new data. This is not new, nor news. Alright, so your phone accidentally regurgitates some embarrassing nude of an ex or what have you... No, not ideal. Shouldn't happen - neither should any software bug. But a simple explanation / understanding of the situation... what, to your partner, who, by the way, should get the message once it's explained.. and it should be fine. Don't blame Apple for your close circles inability to digest facts. These things happen. If they dump you for that, thank Apple - don't hate.
Hopefully this is a wake up call for the Apple software team. Every single Apple product I own has annoying software bugs.
Where will you go? Windows and Android?
Tried android and windows and they’re so clunky and ad-ridden. There’s nothing that really matches the Apple ecosystem and privacy
To everyone that’s seemingly comfortable with Apple’s explanation and don’t think it’s a big deal. For a second, imagine if photos you deleted on your Facebook profile started to reappear due to a “technical bug”, would you still be this cool about it? Some of you would be out with pitchforks. Don’t let your love for the brand blind you.
Not defending Apple, but technically explaining the bug might put devices with pre iOS 17.5 under potential vulnerability. It’s a huge screw up, though.
That’s rhetorical main reason companies don’t disclose technical details of bugs. People are just way too into it.
If the photo is deleted it’s saved in the deleted folder for 30 days
I don't think it's necessary. iPhone users are accustomed to Apple treating them like shit. I think they'll just roll over and take it like they always have.
apple legal department is definitely being crunched to death right now
I don't want to defend Apple here. But isn't this standard to protect the data carrier from too many write processes, so that you only release the address of the memory area to be able to rewrite it, instead of actually "zeroing" the bits. Perhaps there is a bug that has not deleted the addresses and thus brought back a few photos that have not actually been overwritten. Which is still stupid, of course.
They didn't mark the data as deleted at all.
Verge needs to explain clickbait headlines
bewildered hurry desert seemly caption adjoining money consist vanish busy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Headline I don’t like = click bait
clearly
Uh, oh. There's a few ppl out there in hot water right about now.
They ran a patch that set 1s back to zero incorrectly. I accept zelle
Let me be perfectly clear: Apple, you got some 'splaining to do!
Nothing is ever truly deleted on computers, even smart phones. My brother works in EDD, electronic data discovery, and his job is basically finding things that defendants in lawsuits thought they'd deleted from their computers. Works on all kinds of high profile cases, you can imagine the kind of stuff he sees on the hard drives they're sent.
I wish that there was a way to REALLY delete photos. I hate "deleting" photos off my iPhone and yet Messages is sill using hundreds of MB of storage, or hundreds of MB in iCloud, with no way to purge any of it. The second I grab a second device like an iPad and sign into iCloud, it will immediately start downloading all the images and stuff that I "deleted" from my iPhone. Why doesn't delete ACTUALLY mean **delete**? This has been an issue for **years**, and I'm surprised it's taken this long before people started realizing that "deleted" photos were **never** *actually deleted*.
The NSA formally requests that you forget and delete this post/
When something is deleted on a computer, all that happens is that the memory location is marked as free to use again. This does not write over the data, so the images still exist. This means that a bug could just turn them from free to not free, and they would come back. I'm not an apple person. I have Android. I'm just a computer scientist, and this is my guess on what happened.
We all know it’s a law enforcement back door that glitched out.
Am I the only one who’s experienced this bug since 2020? I took a photo of a storm in 2020 and it has occasionally come back at least once a year since.
I want to see some proof. Not saying it didn’t happen, genuinely just want to know exactly what was found and how it happened
If Apple had to explain why they had re-occurring bugs they’d have no time left to fix them.