How to View Pictures by Date on iPad

To view pictures by date on iPad, open Photos, tap Library, then tap Years or Months and pick the time you want. Tap All to see every photo and video in date order. For one recent day, tap Collections and scroll down to Recent Days. You can also tap the search button and type a month or year.

These steps are for iPadOS 27 and match iPadOS 26 and 18; iPadOS 17 and earlier have their own section. Apple explains how to find photos and videos by date.

Which Date View Should You Use?

The Photos app has several ways to get to a date. Pick the one that matches what you remember about the picture.

What you know	Where to go	What you see
The year	Library > Years	A quick way to jump to one year
The month or event	Library > Months	Each month, grouped by events such as trips and parties
A day in the last little while	Collections > Recent Days	One collection per day, with a Show All option
A month or year you can type	The search button	Date suggestions and matching photos
Nothing but a rough time	Library > All	Every photo and video in one scrolling grid

How to Browse Photos by Year or Month on iPad

This is the main method in iPadOS 18 and later.

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Tap Library.
3. Tap Years to find a specific year, or tap Months to see the photos from each month organized by events like a family outing, birthday party or trip.
4. Tap a year or month to open it, then swipe to look through the pictures.
5. Tap All when you want to see every photo and video instead of the highlights.
6. Tap Library or All to jump back to your most recent photos.

Apple notes that the Years and Months views are curated, which means the app picks your best shots. Similar photos, screenshots, whiteboards and receipts are left out of those two views. If a picture you expect is not there, it has not been deleted. Tap All to find it.

If the sidebar is taking up room, Apple’s guide to how to browse your photo library says you can close it and still use the Years, Months and All buttons. You can also pinch the screen in the library to zoom in or out, which makes it faster to scroll through a long stretch of time.

How to Find Photos From a Recent Day

The Library buttons stop at months. To open a single day, use the Recent Days collection.

1. Open Photos and tap Collections.
2. Scroll down to Recent Days.
3. Swipe left or right to move between days, or tap Recent Days to view all of them.
4. Tap a day to open it.
5. Tap Show All to see every photo from that day.

When a day first opens, you see a summary of the best photos from it. Show All is what reveals the rest. For a day that is too old to appear under Recent Days, use Library > All and scroll to it, or search for the month.

On an iPhone, you can play a day’s photos as a slideshow and turn off the slideshow music if you want quiet.

How to Search for a Date

1. In Photos, tap the search button in the top-right corner.
2. Type a month or a year, such as December 2023.
3. Tap one of the suggestions that appears, or run the search.
4. Swipe up to browse the complete results.

Apple’s guide to how to search for photos and videos lists a date (month or year) as something you can type, and says the search screen suggests dates from your library. It does not specifically list searching for one exact day, so if a full date does not return what you need, search for the month and scroll. You can sort the results by Captured or Added, and you can add a media type such as Video to narrow things down.

How to Sort by Date Taken or Date Added

The library can be ordered in two ways, and the wrong one is a common reason photos seem to be out of order.

1. Open Photos and tap Library.
2. Tap the sort button. It is an icon, not a word. Look for two small arrows pointing up and down.
3. At the top of the list, tap Captured or Added.

• Captured: photos and videos are sorted by the date they were taken.
• Added: photos and videos are ordered by when they joined your library, and the ones you added most recently appear at the bottom.

Choose Captured when you want to browse by date. With Added, an old picture that you saved from a message or imported yesterday sits next to the photos you took yesterday.

The same menu holds filters and View Options. Under View Options you can hide Screenshots, From My Mac and Shared with You items to cut clutter. To undo a filter and get the full library back, tap Remove Filters.

How to Sort an Album by Date

Albums you create have their own sort order, separate from the library.

1. Open Photos, tap Collections, then tap Albums.
2. Tap an album to open it.
3. Tap the sort button, then choose a sort option.

An album can be sorted newest to oldest, oldest to newest, or in a custom order. The custom order lets you touch and hold a thumbnail and drag it to a new spot, so pick one of the date options if you want the album in date order.

How to See or Change a Photo’s Date

To check when a picture was taken, open it, then swipe up or tap the info button. The panel shows the date and time the photo or video was taken, along with details such as the device that captured it and where.

A photo with the wrong date shows up in the wrong year or month. This can happen with scanned pictures or photos from a camera whose clock was not set. You can correct it, but note that the change affects where the photo appears in every date view.

1. Open the photo or video, then tap the info button.
2. Tap Adjust Info, then tap Adjust Date & Time.
3. Use the calendar and clock to set the correct date and time.
4. Tap Adjust.

To fix several at once, tap Select in the library, tap the thumbnails you want to change, then follow the same steps. To undo the change later, repeat the steps and tap Revert to restore the original date and time.

Viewing Photos by Date in iPadOS 17 and Earlier

Older iPads that cannot run iPadOS 18 use the previous Photos layout, which works like this:

1. Open Photos. If the sidebar is hidden, swipe from the left edge of the screen to open it.
2. Tap Library.
3. Tap Years, Months, Days or All Photos.

In that version, Days shows your best photos in chronological order, grouped by the time or place they were taken. Years, Months and Days are all curated, so tap All Photos to see everything. There is no Collections tab or Recent Days collection in that layout.

If Years or Months Don’t Show

• You do not see Years or Months. Make sure you tapped Library and not Collections. Those buttons belong to the library view.
• You do not see a Days button. That is expected in iPadOS 18 and later. Use Recent Days under Collections, or scroll in All.
• Photos are missing from a month. Years and Months leave out similar shots, screenshots and receipts. Tap All. If items are still missing, open the sort menu, tap Remove Filters, and check View Options for hidden screenshots or shared items.
• Old photos appear among new ones. The library is probably sorted by Added. Switch to Captured.
• One photo is in the wrong year. Its stored date is wrong. Use Adjust Date & Time as described above.
• Pictures from your iPhone are not there at all. Date views only show what is in this iPad’s library. To bring them over, sync photos between iPhone and iPad.

Photos by Date Questions

Related Guides

Once you can find photos by date, it is easier to tidy up or move a specific batch. These guides cover the next steps:

• How to sync photos between iPhone and iPad
• How to check storage on your iPad
• How to transfer photos from iPad to a flash drive
• How to delete photos from iPad but keep them in iCloud