How to Keep Your iPhone’s Camera Settings From Resetting When You Close the App

Your iPhone’s camera is chock-full of different modes and settings: Live Photos, slo-mo video, panoramic landscape shots, the list goes on and on. More often than not, you use the camera the same way, with the settings you like most, every time you snap a pic. Unfortunately, your iPhone seems to reset all of those settings every time you relaunch the Camera app. Luckily, there’s a fix for this annoying “feature.”

Apple hides the ability to preserve your camera settings in the aptly-named “Preserve Settings” menu. Enabling it does what you likely want your camera to do in the first place — preserve the settings you used last time so they are still active the next time you open your camera. This way, Live Photos can stay turned off until you want them on again, you can keep Video mode enabled rather than have Camera switch back to Photo by default, and you can keep ProRAW enabled from shot to shot.

To find these settings, just head to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings. Here, you’ll see a suite of options, each with its own toggle. Scan through the list, and enable the toggles next to options that you’d like Camera to remember, and leave alone options that you’d like Camera to reset every time.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is that this list isn’t the same on every iPhone. Because some iPhones have different camera features, you might not see all of the options on your particular device. In fact, some of the settings are only available on iOS 15, which is currently in beta testing. Here’s a look at the full list and what they do; your options may vary:

• Camera Mode: keeps the last used camera mode (Photos, Video, Portrait, etc.).

• Creative Controls: remembers the last used filter, aspect ratio, light, or depth setting.

• Exposure Adjustment: preserves the last used exposure adjustment, and always keeps the exposure adjustment indicator on-screen.

• Night Mode: preserves your last night mode setting (iOS 15).

• Portrait Zoom: keeps the Portrait mode zoom lens, instead of reverting to the default lens (iOS 15).

• Apple ProRAW: keeps ProRAW enabled (iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max)

• Live Photo: preserves your Live Photo setting.

You can go back in and tweak these settings whenever you want. If you find yourself wishing that your camera would always open to Photo mode again, or that you want the filters to reset back to default every time, you can always change your mind.