iOS 17.5 update is giving some users anxiety, thanks to major bug

Apple rolled out the iOS 17.5 update earlier this week, bringing minor updates to select apps and ramping up the device security. But it apparently turned into a headache for some users who reported their iPhones began showing photos that were deleted years ago. The new iOS 17.5 update may have a bug that is adding long-deleted photos to the top of the Photos app.

Several users who updated their iPhone to iOS 17.5 (spotted by 9to5Google) said old photos that were deleted years ago began appearing again in the Photos app. For some users, the bug turned into a nightmare when a few of their NSFW photos resurfaced in the app while sharing the latest photos with a contact.

Is the iOS 17.5 bug a nightmare?

“When in conversation with my partner, I went to send a picture and saw that the latest pictures were NSFW material we’d made years ago when we were living apart. It was permanently deleted years ago, but magically it’s back? I checked my iPad and it also has pictures (some art work I did years ago). I feel so uncomfortable,” wrote a user on Reddit.

“Same here. I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly,” another user said while replying in the thread. Several other users have reported the same issue on their updated iPhone and iPad devices.

What is causing the problem?

Apple has not yet acknowledged the issue, meaning there is no way to tell what is causing old and deleted photos to reappear in the Photos app. The Photos app has a “Recently Deleted” folder that keeps images deleted from the main folder for 30 days and junks them for good after. But this issue is different because the photos users are seeing are older than 30 days and, hence, could not possibly have been residing in the “Recently Deleted” album.