Software & Apps

Hello everybody,

I may or may not know somebody who is a Private Contractor @ Apple, and they may have or may not have given me details regarding the current situation.

This glitch affects “deleted” photos, primarily causing them to reappear after a user updates their iPhone to iOS 17.5. Let’s clear up a few simple things first:

1. No, Apple is NOT permanently saving all of your photos to a remote server without your knowledge. This also means they are NOT spying on you.

2. No, this glitch more than likely isn’t a backdoor into iCloud/iPhones. Your device and cloud data is mostly secure.

Now how are the deleted photos “reappearing” after being deleted? This is because almost every case of this incident happening which Apple has investigated has been caused by the photo(s) being deleted from the “Photos” app but NOT the “Files” app. They are two separate apps with two copies of the photos.

When you download, share/receive, or take a screenshot (Mainly Safari screenshots) on your iPhone it sometimes (Depending on different factors) saved to both the “Files” and “Photos” app.

Now when you go to delete said photos from the “Photos” app a identical copy of it is still present within the “Files” app, this makes it appear as it is deleted from the “Photos” app.

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.

And as for the photos reappearing after a factory reset of the device, Apple has not investigated ANY CASES OF THIS. It is a myth, your Apple devices are secure.

For any other questions please ask and I’ll get back to you.

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EDIT: The official statement about this from Apple said that the photos experienced “Database Corruption”, this would correlate with what’s stated below:

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.

During the re-indexing the operating system mistakenly re-saved photos/media/files from the files this did cause the corruption of some photos/media/files during the mistaken transfer from the “Files” app to “Photos” app, this would explain the reported cases of lower quality images along with different file name’s.

Video Summary:

This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted.

This channel status thing is aggravating me to no end and I can't find a setting to disable it. I don't want myself or other people in my server being auto assigned chilling every time they join a voice chat and then it broadcasts to anybody else without our permission. Can a server owner disable this somehow? Can a user?

I even tried setting a blank custom status and it reverts to chilling the next day anyway.