How to sort iPhone photos by date

The Photos app has never had folders by date, but it does not need them: your whole library is a timeline. What you can choose is which date it follows, and how far you zoom out. Here is how it works on iOS 27, tested in the Simulator against Apple’s own guide. The steps are the same on iOS 26.

Sort by date taken or date added

1. Open Photos and tap Library.
2. Tap the sort button at the top of the library, next to Select.
3. At the top of the menu, tap Captured to sort by the date each photo was taken, or Added to sort by the date it was added to your library.

	Captured	Added
Order	The date the photo or video was taken	The date it arrived in your library
A photo saved from a chat today, taken in 2023	Sits with your 2023 photos	Sits with today’s items
Good for	Browsing your life in order	Finding what you just saved, downloaded or received

Captured is the one most people want: it puts a photo saved from a friend’s message next to the photos you took that day, not next to today’s screenshots. Pick Added when you are looking for something you saved recently but cannot remember when it was taken. Apple notes that with Added, the most recent items appear at the bottom of the library.

The same menu also filters the library, for example to Favorites or to one Media Type such as videos. Sorting and filtering only change the view, never the photos.

Browse by year and month

Scrolling back three years one row at a time is slow. Zoom out instead:

1. In Library, swipe down on the grid until a bar appears at the bottom with Years, Months and All.
2. Tap Years to see one card per year, or Months to see each month, grouped by events such as a trip or a birthday.
3. Tap a card to jump into that time, and All to come back to every photo.

Years and Months are curated: according to Apple, they show your best shots and leave out clutter such as similar photos, screenshots and receipts. So if a photo seems to be missing there, switch to All. Nothing is deleted or hidden from your library.

For the last few days, Collections › Recent Days has one card per day. Tap a day to see the photos from it.

Fix a photo with the wrong date

A photo that shows up in the wrong place in a date-sorted library almost always has the wrong date. Common causes:

• Scans and photos of old prints carry the day you scanned them, not the day they were taken.
• Images saved from apps and websites often have no date taken at all, so Photos uses the day you saved them.
• Photos from another camera whose clock was never set.
• Travel. A photo taken abroad shows the local time of the place, so it can sort a few hours away from what you expect.

To fix one photo:

1. Open it and swipe up, or tap the info button. The details show the date and time it was taken.
2. Tap Adjust next to the date.
3. On Adjust Date & Time, pick the day in the calendar, set the Time and, if needed, the Time Zone. The Original and Adjusted dates are shown at the top.
4. Tap Adjust.

To fix a whole batch, such as a roll of scanned prints, tap Select in the library, select the photos, tap the More button, then Adjust Info › Adjust Date & Time. To undo a change, Apple’s guide says to go back to the same screen and tap Revert.

The same menu has Adjust Location, useful when a photo has no place and you want it on the map with the rest of a trip.

Make date albums only when you need them

You do not need an album for each year or month: the library already does that, and Years and Months jump straight there. Albums are worth it for what dates cannot express, such as one trip that spans two months, or the best photos of the year.

If you do want them, name them so they sort well in your album list, for example “2026 Bali” rather than “Bali”. The guide to organizing photos on iPhone covers albums and folders, and organizing vacation photos walks through one album per trip.

Go through your photos by date with PrunePic

Browsing by date is also the easiest way to clean up: you remember which photos from a given week matter. PrunePic shows your library one photo at a time, and its cleaning modes let you choose the order under Organize by: Newest first to keep up with recent photos, or Oldest first to start with the backlog from years ago.

Every card shows the date it was taken in its bottom left corner, and you can choose what both corners show in the card settings. On This Day, part of PrunePic Pro, goes the other way round: it shows the photos taken on today’s date in past years, a small batch each day.

PrunePic reads the dates Photos already has. It does not change them: fix a wrong date in the Photos app, as above.

Common mistakes

• Leaving the sort on Added. Saved and received images then land among today’s photos. Switch to Captured.
• Thinking Years or Months lost photos. They are curated views. Tap All to see everything.
• Fixing dates one by one. Select the whole batch and use Adjust Info › Adjust Date & Time once.
• Building an album per month. Years and Months already give you that view, without the upkeep.

The bottom line

Pick Captured in the sort menu for a true timeline, swipe down on the library for Years and Months, and fix stray photos with Adjust in their details. Keep albums for the things a date cannot say, like a trip or a project.