How to Delete Lots of Photos on iPhone Quickly
Updated
Most of us have thousands of photos we'll never look at again. iOS has several built-in ways to delete photos in bulk, and a swipe-based app can make reviewing them much faster. Here's how to clear out your camera roll without giving up a whole weekend.
Option 1: Drag to select many photos in the Photos app
The quickest built-in way to delete a run of photos is to select them all at once.
- Open the Photos app and scroll to your library.
- Tap Select in the top-right corner.
- Touch one photo, then slide your finger across and down to select a whole range. Keep dragging toward the top or bottom edge to scroll while selecting.
- Tap the Trash button, then confirm the deletion.
This works well when a whole stretch of photos can go — a burst of screenshots, say. It's less helpful when good and bad photos are mixed together.
Option 2: Clean up by type with Media Types and Utilities
Photos automatically groups your library into collections such as Screenshots, Videos, Bursts and Screen Recordings (under Media Types) and Duplicates (under Utilities). These are often the biggest sources of clutter.
- In Photos, scroll down to Media Types and open Screenshots, Videos or another collection.
- Tap Select, drag across the items you don't need, and tap the Trash button.
- Under Utilities, open Duplicates and tap Merge to combine exact copies, keeping the highest-quality version.
Option 3: Swipe through photos one at a time with Butterfly
When keepers and junk are mixed together, you have to look at each photo — and selecting and deleting them one by one gets slow. Butterfly turns that review into a single gesture per photo.
- Install Butterfly and allow Full Access to your photo library.
- Pick a batch of 20, 50, or 100 photos and videos.
- Swipe left to keep, swipe up to mark for deletion, swipe down to add to Favorites, and swipe right to go back.
- At the end of the batch, review what you marked, put back anything you're unsure about, and tap Confirm Batch.
Nothing is deleted until you confirm, and Butterfly never uploads your photos. The free plan covers 200 photos and videos a week.
Make sure deleted photos are really gone
Deleting a photo doesn't free up space right away: it moves to the Recently Deleted album and stays there for 30 days. To reclaim the space now:
- In Photos, scroll down to Utilities and open Recently Deleted. Unlock it with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.
- Tap Select, then Delete All — or choose individual items and delete them.
Only empty Recently Deleted when you're sure. Items removed from there can't be recovered without a separate backup.
If you use iCloud Photos
With iCloud Photos turned on, deleting a photo on your iPhone also deletes it from iCloud and from every other device signed in with the same Apple ID. If you want to keep a copy somewhere else, export it before you delete.