With iOS 26.1, Apple will finally address one of the most annoying issues iPhone users face when uploading photos to third-party apps. They will no longer need to keep the app open for the upload process to complete.
Right now, only Apple’s Photos app can reliably back up your pictures to the cloud even if the app is not in the foreground.
Reliable background photo upload coming soon to iPhone
File uploads and automatic media backups to third-party apps and cloud services have always been unreliable on the iPhone. Most apps explicitly require you to keep them open until the upload completes. That means you have to stare at a progress bar instead of using your iPhone for anything else.
If you close the app mid-upload, it pauses after a few minutes and only resumes once you reopen it.
Thankfully, after years of frustration, Apple will finally address this limitation with iOS 26.1. As 9to5Mac reports, the company will launch a new Background Resource Upload extension as part of PhotoKit with iOS 26’s next major release. This will enable photo apps to seamlessly upload media to the cloud in the background.
Developers will need to update their apps
Apple’s documentation explicitly states the “system manages uploads on your app’s behalf, and processes them in the background even when people switch to other apps or lock their devices.”
The framework is still in beta but it should go live with iOS 26.1. Developers will have to update their apps to take advantage of the new extension, though. So don’t expect photo uploads to reliably work in the background right after updating to iOS 26.1.
It’s taken years of user complaints. So, it’s great to see Apple finally addressing one of the iPhone’s most frustrating everyday limitations.
