iOS 17.5 bug, allegedly causing deleted photos to resurface.

Users on Reddit reported that after updating their phones to iOS 17.5, their old deleted pictures resurfaced. One user was shocked to find that their NSFW photos from 2021, which they deleted, appeared in photos, marked as recently uploaded to iCloud. Others reported similar problems, with one user commenting, "I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly."

Apple is yet to comment on the issue, but speculation states that the issue could be an indexing bug, a glitch in the Photos library itself, or a syncing problem between devices and iCloud Photos.

It is also theorized, that Apple, in trying to fix a syncing bug in iOS 17.3, might have created a new one – this time messing with iCloud backups. Some users running iOS 17.5 developer beta 4 earlier reported similar experiences, suggesting that the bug might have flown under the radar during testing.

It's not clear what's happening, provided that some of the photos were taken years ago, this cannot be an issue with recently deleted photos being undeleted. In Apple's Photos app, deleted pictures and videos are kept in the Recently Deleted album for 30 days so that users can recover or permanently remove them from all devices.

To prevent any troubling memories from the past from resurfacing users need to check their Photos app for any unwanted visitors and permanently delete them again. As insurance, they can temporarily disable iCloud Photos and hope Apple releases a fix soon.

Apple has released iOS 17.5.1 for the bug fix.