How To Fix Photos Not Appearing In Camera Roll In iOS
A few days ago, my iPhone randomly stopped saving photos to the Photos app. The photos I took via the Camera app appeared as little thumbnails in the app but when I switched to the Photos app they weren’t there. Another error I kept encountering was that I was unable to send photos over iMessages. As soon as I would select the photo, the Messages app would freeze. A quick search showed this problem has been plaguing users since iOS 8.1 with no solution in sight and no acknowledgement from Apple that this was a genuine problem. The good news is that there’s a pretty easy solution that worked on my phone and here it is.
The phone in question is an iPhone 6 running iOS 9.2. The problem appeared randomly and not after an update or reset.
Step 1: Restart your iPhone
Step 2: Open the Camera app and take a photo
Step 3: From inside the camera app, tap the thumbnail of the photo you just took to view it
Step 4: Tap the Share button at the bottom and send the photo to a contact over iMessages
Step 5: Restart your iPhone one more time for good measure and your problem should be solved
It’s not clear what is causing this problem. It certainly dates back a few months according to many online forums. The more perplexing thing is that it suddenly appeared even though there was no recent firmware update made on the device. The phone had been running fine, and the photos were being saved without any problems until they suddenly just stopped. The good news is that your photos are indeed saving so once you fix the problem, all the photos that seemed to have not saved will be there in the Photos app.
This just started happening to me in July 2020 on an I phone 11 pro never happened before on any of my phones and your fix does work but the next day it all starts happening over again – wtf
OMG it worked !!!!! wow
u r super amazing thank u sooooo much, I lost hope on my phone
it happened to me a month ago but i dont give a damn to it then i realize its not saving any pics that i took from the camera, i want to try this but the buttons are all greyed and i cant click. any other solutions?
my iphone 6 is not photos in gallery and not opening any app….pleaseeeeeeeee help i have more 20k photos
whoever you are i love you. i thought id lost 2 hours worth of work taking photos of tax receipts!!
I have this problem too, but when following the steps the Share button is freezing, cannot use. Please advice me.
Just followed the instructions…now it is showing “RESTORING” for the last 5 minutes in the Photos. Does it take that long to show up or should i just restart my iphone once again?
I’m having the same problem with my iPhone 6. Another strange thing my photos started doing was it started rearranged some of my older videos to my most recent photos in my camera roll. I tried the above repair, but it greys out the share button. Not sure what’s going on.
The share icon & all the other icons are grey. The thumbnails show that pictures are present in the phone. When I open the gallery, it shows zero pictures. When storage is opened, the photos tab doesn’t appear but it’s occupying space. Any idea what to do?
hey man, I have the same issue with your phone, I read your comment in a discussion, may I know how you fixed yours?
back up your iPhone on your laptop, factory reset it & then restore via iTunes. That’s how I fixed my problem
I’m having the EXACT same problem.
I tried to send a photo via Whatsapp and my phone crashed and then all my photos disappeared and then they started restoring slowly. It then happened again and my photos haven’t restored and screenshots aren’t saving.
I go on my Camera app and can see the thumbnail of the most recent photo taken in the bottom left corner of the app but when I click it, it says “No Photos or Videos” and also the share icon is greyed out.
I’m thinking I should back up and then reset my phone to factory settings and then restore from back up but I’m scared that all my photos will disappear and I’ve just came back from vacation.
HELP! Does anyone have a solution? The guy on apple chat was stumped lol
back up your iPhone on your laptop, factory reset it & then restore via iTunes. That’s how I fixed my problem.
I am having this problem but with screenshots. My iphone 6 is not saving screenshots to the camera roll. If anyone has a solution, I’d be delighted to read it.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I had almost given up and reset my phone to factory settings when i came across your solution. Problem solved and all my photos back and saved to flash drive. I had to delete my apps to take a new photo (as my camera app would not work) Then I followed your instructions.Thanks once again xx
Not working! When i click the thumbnail from camera app, all options are frozen! Cannot share, edit, fav it or anything! All the photos are blurred as if they are catche files but I don’t use icloud and moreover cloud is empty! Happened since i replaced my battery. Please help! Thanks!
didn’t work for me when i’v taken a photo there is nothing i can click on; just the photo that i can zoom in
Gray buttons..not working
Just tried this today and it worked. I can’t believe it – thank you so much, I was so sad that all my photos were missing.
This worked, thank you so much!
when i tapped on the photo I just took it said could not find item!!! pls help
Thanks for wonderful solution. It worked perfectly for me. :thumbsup:
Just started happening to me a few days – iPhone 7 Plus. Seems like it is some sort of hangup with live photos, because they would load to Photos app, but it would take a good 30 seconds to negotiate the download when it should be nearly instantaneous. Just tried above and no luck… One of many bugs I’ve been experiencing in the last week with the new phone.
The iPhone model I experienced this on was the iPhone 6 which doesn’t have Live Photos. It’s a Photos app problem definitely and not limited to just Live Photos. Again, I’m genuinely surprised the iPhone 7 has it. It’s new and Apple should have fixed this by now.
It worked !! 🙂 Thank you
This worked For me. I have a new iphone 7 plus with ios10. I just took some photos yesterday that were very meaningful. I was kinda upset that i couldn’t find them any where. The 3 videos showed back up and 7 photos. Thank you
I’m kind of surprised the iPhone 7 had this problem. Glad you have your pictures and videos 🙂
Worked fine…thanks.
How did that work?? That’s so cool. Just started happening with my iphone 7 on ios 10. Totally fixed it.
It worked! Thank you so much! :)))))
I reset my phone and went on camera but it didn’t let me take a picture???
Thank you sooooo much! I was on holiday, snapping away all day only to find over 200 photos missing that evening! This worked amazingly! Can’t believe it – thank you!!!
For the last bit (taking a photo, send via iMessage and restart) I had had to repeat this twice before it worked … can’t thank you enough!
Thanks it worked for me in iPhone 6 having iOS 9.3.4
Whew!! Thank you!! I swear I reset the phone yesterday and nothing but I didn’t try to send a pic. Did that after reading this & boom! Back in business!
oh my gosh!! thank you!! i was thinking of getting a new phone because i couldnt figure out what was wrong with my photos app!
Thank you! This never happened to me before today but this fixed it. Based on what a few others have said I think it’s about time I clear off my phone and do a reset. Seems like there is a lot of garbage hanging around messing things up and slowing it down lately
thanks! this worked for me as well!
I’ve recently had this same problem, tried this fix but it unfortunately hasn’t worked?! only showing a around 20 images out of 7000 i had on my phone, these were all backed to iCloud and in settings it still shows photos taking up space? any ideas why this is?
Thank you SO much!!! I thought I had lost all my photos and videos from Glastonbury but your tip helped me to resolve it.
Thank you so much for this!!!! You saved me! I had a trip coming up and did not know if I would be able to take any pictures!!
it works!! genious!!
tried this and the share button is greyed out and have restarted phone twice and not working, any ideas to get it working proerly
Haven’t come across this problem where the buttons are greyed out so I can’t say. The photos are there though so maybe back up your phone, reset it and see if the bug disappears and then restore the phone from the back up.
I am having the same issue with a 5. The share button is greyed out.
I restarted, clicked a new photo, opened the thumbnail. After this instead of sharing, I clicked on the “All photos” button on the top left then on “Albums”. The bug wasn’t fixed yet, but I clicked “Photos” then “Albums” again and the bug got fixed.
I’m having the same problems as keeta.. when I’m in photos if I scroll down it keeps saying restoring. I have thousands of pictures missing. I recently turned iCloud off (the problem was happening before I did this) because I didn’t want iCloud to back my phone up with the missing pictures. If I turn my iCloud back on and do a back up will my lost pictures be backed up as well? If I do a restore should they be there from the back up?
Did you find a fix?
i have same issue with Millie, did anyone found out? TT my 15xxx pics was not found in iphone and computer, it just show 1xxx items and every i try to backup it always disconnected from itunes. and i couldnt take photos on camera roll, the button is greyed. anyone have a solution?:(
Take a back-up now. Your photos are still there. They just aren’t showing up. Make sure the photos are backed up when you take a fresh back up. You might have to go the slightly longer route and restore your iPhone before this fix works for you. I haven’t personally encountered this problem with the share button being greyed out but this ought to fix the problem.
AWESOME! Totally worked. Thanks. Couldn’t have figured this out was crying over lost photos. Pefrect (though weird) solution. Thank you for this post.
Woohoo! You are a legend, thank you!
That just awesomely worked. 🙂
Thanks a lot! This actually helped and no need in resetting/recovering anything.
Not only does my iPhone now save pictures, it shows all of the ones I thought I had lost when it wasn’t saving.
Mine worked but those picture that didn’t save are still in my icon but when clicked on it show a different picture that WAS saved
This works, thank you!
GTFO! Can’t believe it worked! Thank you so much, man!
Oh my gosh! Thank you so much!
This worked for me thank you. I also discovered my phone imported a few photos from icloud that were dated in the future. The digital camera had the wrong date set. Once I removed these photos my camera & photo roll was working normal again.
it did not work…
THANK YOU. I thought I was going crazy.
Thanks so much, that worked straight away. And it brought back the missing photos from before.
It worked! Thank you!!
Thank youuuuu
This worked just fine for a few weeks until the same problem reappeared, unfortunately.
What if the buttons are grayed and you can’t click them?
If you restart your device, you should see the photos in the roll even though they weren’t there before. Then try again the solution provided here even if it worked for me, the same bug reappeared a few weeks later.
Oh man! THANKYOU! I was just about ready to rage quit. Haha!
Brilliant! I did exactly as you said and all my photos have appeared! So thankful :))
That totally worked for me : thanx ! 🙂