Apple has acknowledged that the issue allowing users to view old images that were deleted from an iPhone after installing iOS 17.5 was caused by a problem in the device’s database and not in the iCloud Photos service. Several users found that the beta version of the OS was restoring photos to iCloud Photos that had been deleted months or even years ago. One user even mentioned on Reddit that photos from 2010 were still appearing as the most recent files uploaded to iCloud, despite repeated deletion attempts.
To address this issue, Apple released an update, iOS 17.5.1, although they did not specify the exact reason for such occurrences. The company has now clarified that the problem was due to a corrupt entry in the device’s file system database and is unrelated to iCloud Photos. The affected photos that were not completely deleted from the users’ iPhones were not synced with iCloud Photos, potentially being transferred between devices through different methods, but not through the cloud service.
Apple has provided steps to permanently delete the desired files, advising users to access the Settings tab, select the ‘General’ option, and choose ‘Reset’. Within this menu, users must click on the ‘Delete all content and settings’ button. Meanwhile, researchers at Synactiv analyzed the code of the iOS 17.5.1 update and found that Apple had removed part of a function responsible for scanning and reimporting photos to the file system, leading to reindexing of old files and their reintegration into users’ image galleries.
Researchers have also identified technical changes made by Apple in
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