iOS 17 feature request: Take me to this photo

This week we heard about a new way Apple plans to let us use the iPhone 14 Pro always-on display in iOS 17. If you’ve ever wanted your iPhone to present more info panels in landscape, well, you’re in luck.

I hope there are more updates to customizing the standard Lock Screen as well. Specifically, there’s one thing about the Photo Shuffle version of the Lock Screen in iOS 16 that I hope changes in iOS 17.

Apple is pretty good about resurfacing photos from your library while still letting you see them in context. The Photo Shuffle Lock Screen is not one of these examples.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great feature. I recently started using a Photo Shuffle Lock Screen that pulls photos of my kids and cycles through them every hour. Not every photo makes for a great wallpaper, but I’m always delighted at which photos it finds.

Sometimes it features a photo that I think is especially nice to use. Other times it chooses photos that really funny in context but shouldn’t be used for long.

There have been plenty of opportunities to embarrass my kids by showing them which photo is featured for the hour. More often, I show them a nice memory of them when they were much younger that surprises them.

Honestly, the Photo Shuffle Lock Screen has been surprisingly good at pulling out photos from my library that I may actually want to feature.

Sometimes it even demonstrates that cropping in on someone’s face in a group shot actually makes a nice portrait photo of them. These are really the ones that I want to dig out of my photo library, duplicate, and crop.

But, as far as I can tell, and I wish I was wrong, there’s no way to go from the Photo Shuffle Lock Screen to the photo being featured in your library. My workaround has been to take a screenshot of my Lock Screen as a reminder to go back and hunt down that photo. You can also view photos of specific people based on faces, but it’s still a hunt to find that exact photo you want.

If I’m right in thinking that I’m not wrong, I do hope this is something Apple has taken into consideration when preparing iOS 17. I’m fairly late to the experience, but I’m confident others have noticed much sooner.

Update! Wish granted! There’s a way! Five taps is clunky and probably too many, so a photo icon next to the customize button after one long press could work better.