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Alert: iOS 16.3.1 breaks the Google Photos app on iPhone

Published Feb 13th, 2023 7:30PM EST
Google's Photos app.
Image: Google

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Yesterday, Apple rolled out iOS 16.3.1 to fix bugs, add features, and improve Crash Detection, which has been prone to triggering when it shouldn’t. We’ve reported on multiple instances where the device erroneously phones for help, especially when skiing.

Normally, we suggest that you update to the latest version of any software as quickly as possible, but iOS 16.3.1 appears to break compatibility with the Google Photos app. If you’re an avid Google Photos user with an iPhone, you might want to hold off on updating until Apple addresses this issue.

As a number of iPhone owners on social media have pointed out, the Google Photos app crashes if you try to open it on a device running iOS 16.3.1. As you can see in the video below (shared by 9to5Mac), the app opens up for an instant before immediately crashing:

At the time of writing, neither Google nor Apple had commented on the situation. It’s unclear if this can be fixed by Google on its end or if Apple will have to seed another software update in order to restore Google Photos compatibility on iOS 16, but it is most likely an app-specific issue.

We’ll update this article if and when we hear anything on it from Google or Apple.

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.