iOS 17.5 is allegedly resurfacing pictures that were deleted years ago

A bug in iOS 17.5 is allegedly resurfacing photos that were deleted years ago for some iPhone users, according to posts on Reddit. The affected iPhone users say that after updating to iOS 17.5 – which was released on Monday – there are a number of pictures in the Photos app that were deleted years ago.

May 17, 2024 update below…

iOS 17.5 has a pretty bad Photos app problem

The images in question reportedly show up as the most recent images in the Photos app after installing iOS 17.5. One user says:

When in conversation with my partner, I went to send a picture and saw that the latest pictures were NSFW material we’d made years ago when we were living apart. It was permanently deleted years ago, but magically it’s back?

 I checked my iPad and it also has pictures (some art work I did years ago). I feel so uncomfortable.

“Same here. I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly,” another user writes in the Reddit thread.

There are a number of reports of similar situations in the thread on Reddit. Some users are seeing deleted images from years ago reappear in their libraries, while others are seeing images from earlier this year.

By default, the Photos app has a “Recently Deleted” feature that preserves deleted images for 30 days. That’s not what’s happening here, seeing as most of the images in question are months or years old, not days.

Apple hasn’t commented on the problem, but it naturally raises countless concerns and questions about privacy and data retention. Some users on Reddit speculate that iOS 17.5 may have made changes to the Photos app that required the app to re-index photo libraries.

Still, even if the Photos app goes through some sort of re-indexing process in iOS 17.5, there’s no excuse for images that users thought were deleted to re-appear.

Have you noticed any older pictures re-appear in your Photos app after updating to iOS 17.5? Let us know down in the comments.

Update, May 17, 2024:

While a user on Reddit claimed that their old photos resurfaced on an iPad they sold, I have reason to believe that this claim is not true.

Apple has yet to comment on these reports. We’ll update this story as more details emerge.