How to Reset Camera Settings on Your iPhone

While your iPhone is unlikely to beat a purpose-built camera, there’s a lot you can do to optimize its capture quality. Even an outdated iPhone is full of ways to take your photography and videography to the next level. However, sometimes the best way to measure this improvement is to return to the basic default settings.

There are plenty of ways to improve your smartphone photography with any model, and iPhones are no different; There are thousands of great guides to help you choose the right settings for the photos and videos you want. On the other hand, it can be difficult to judge the change in quality if you’ve already spent a lot of time changing your settings or if you have a used phone that arrived pre-scrambled. Sometimes it’s desirable to reset your camera to factory defaults and build from there, but there’s no single button to do this reset. Fortunately, it’s still relatively simple to revert everything to default.

First, you’ll want to start from Settings has Camerawhere you will find everything that is at your disposal. Given how the iPhone has evolved over the past few years, this layout will not be the same for all phones. Fortunately, one thing that will generally be the same is the Keep settings option. Below this option are a number of toggles that, when turned off, automatically reset to their default setting when you open the Camera app. All of these toggles are initially disabled except for the Live Photo toggle, meaning your camera mostly already returns to its original settings after exiting the app.

There are also other settings in this section that can be returned to their default state. Your frame rate for video recording should be 1080p at 30fps (or 240fps for slow motion) and should be the same for cinematic recording if your phone supports this option. Other defaults include stereo input Record sound (or Spatial Audio on iPhone 16 and above) and high efficiency in the Formats section. Grid and level shooting will also be disabled, while Smart HDR and Prioritize Faster Shooting should be enabled.

iPhones that can install iOS 26 have a few additional settings with their own defaults. For example, lens correction, macro control, and scene detection should all be enabled. Additionally, the default resolution under Formats should be 24 MP. ProRAW and resolution control will also be disabled.

There’s a lot to watch out for, of course, so there’s a Hail Mary for those who don’t want to sift through a dozen flip-flops. If you browse via Settings > Transfer or reset iPhoneyou can find the reset options. There is no option to simply reset your camera settings, but you can reset all settings on your iPhone. This will delete all Apple Pay cards, keys, and passes you have and return all settings to default. So only use this option if you are absolutely sure and can revert anything you don’t want to default.