How to clean up your iPhone photos

Three things to know before you delete anything

With iCloud Photos on, a deletion happens everywhere. Deleting a photo on your iPhone also deletes it from iCloud, your iPad and your Mac. If you want to free space on the phone but keep everything in iCloud, read how to delete photos from iPhone but not iCloud first.

iCloud Photos is not a backup. It keeps the same library everywhere, deletions included, and iCloud Backup does not include photos that are already in iCloud Photos. Before a big cleanup, keep your own copy of the photos you would hate to lose: import them to a computer, or save them to an external drive with Save to Files. The iPhone-but-not-iCloud guide shows both.

Deleted photos wait 30 days in Recently Deleted. You can recover them until then, and they keep using storage. That is your safety net while you clean, and the reason storage does not go down right away. One exception: if your iCloud storage is over its limit, photos and videos you delete are removed immediately. If you delete something by mistake, here is how to recover deleted photos.

1. 1You swipe leftThe photo is queued. It is still in your library.
2. 2PrunePic TrashPut it back any time. Undo reverses your last swipe.
3. 3You empty the trashiOS asks you to confirm the deletion.
4. 4Recently DeletedKept in the Photos app for up to 30 days. You can still recover it.
5. 5Gone for goodAfter 30 days, or when you delete it from Recently Deleted.

Deleting everything is a different job. If you want an empty library rather than a sorted one, the bulk methods are in how to delete all photos from iPhone. And to size the backlog before you start, see how many photos you have.

Your first session: ten minutes on the easy wins

Start where decisions take no thought. In Photos, open Collections and scroll to Media Types and Utilities: most of the clutter is grouped there for you.

1. Screenshots. Open Media Types › Screenshots. Boarding passes, receipts and memes from last year can almost all go. The screenshots guide shows how to select many at once.
2. Duplicates. Open Utilities › Duplicates and tap Merge on each set. Photos keeps the best version. The duplicates guide covers the near-identical shots it misses.
3. Long videos. Open Media Types › Videos. One minute of 4K video takes as much space as dozens of photos, so a few deletions here free more than an hour of photo sorting. See how to find large videos.
4. Empty Recently Deleted, if you need the space now. Open Utilities › Recently Deleted, unlock it, tap Select, then the More button and Delete All. Only then does the space come back, but it also ends your 30 days to change your mind. If you are unsure about anything you deleted, skip this step and let iOS empty it later.

Decide fast: what to keep and what to delete

The rest of the library is photo-by-photo work, and speed comes from rules you do not have to think about:

Usually delete	Usually keep
Near-identical takes, except the sharpest one	One good photo per moment
Blurry, dark or accidental shots	People, pets, firsts, places you may not see again
Screenshots of things that are done: tickets, codes, directions	Documents you may need again, such as a passport page
Photos of a parking spot, a whiteboard or a price tag	Anything you would be upset to lose
Memes and images saved from other apps, once shared	Imperfect photos that matter, like the only picture of someone

When in doubt, keep it. A photo you keep can go next month. A photo you delete is gone 30 days later. And do not organize yet: filing photos you will delete next week is wasted time. The organizing guide is the step after this one.

Work through a big backlog without losing your place

A library of 20,000 photos will not be done in one evening, and trying usually ends with giving up halfway. Short sessions work better, and the numbers are less scary than they look:

Library size	Total time at 2 seconds a photo	In 10-minute sessions
2,000 photos	About 1 hour	7 sessions
5,000 photos	About 3 hours	17 sessions
20,000 photos	About 11 hours	67 sessions

The real problem is losing your place. The Photos app does not mark which photos you already looked at, so after a few sessions everything blurs together. Two habits fix it:

• Pick one order and keep to it. Newest first keeps today’s clutter under control. Oldest first works through your history once. Switching between them is how you end up reviewing the same photos twice.
• Go month by month. The library is in date order, so work through one month at a time and note the last month you finished, in a note or a reminder. Swipe down on the library and tap Months to jump to one, as in sorting photos by date.

The same method with PrunePic

PrunePic is built for exactly this one-by-one part. It shows one photo at a time, full screen: swipe left to send it to the PrunePic Trash, up to keep it, right to add it to Favorites or an album.

What changes compared with the Photos app:

• Your place is saved. PrunePic records every photo you keep or delete, in every mode. A photo you kept never comes back, so the next session starts with photos you have not seen. When everything has been reviewed, PrunePic says so.
• The order is built in. In the Everything mode, choose newest or oldest first. Because reviewed photos never come back, each session starts at the first photo you have not seen. Random shuffles the whole library when you want variety.
• Nothing is deleted on a swipe. Photos wait in the PrunePic Trash until you empty it, and iOS asks you to confirm.

With PrunePic Pro, Screenshots and Videos modes cover the first session above, with videos sorted longest first. The free plan includes 10 decisions a day: enough to try the method on a few photos a day, while a backlog of thousands needs Pro to go at the pace in the table.

Keep it clean with a small routine

Once the backlog is gone, a few minutes keep it from coming back:

• Every day, a few photos. A small batch is easy to judge. With PrunePic Pro, On This Day serves photos from today’s date in past years, which are also nice to see again.
• After every trip, while it is fresh. You still remember which shots matter. With PrunePic Pro, Trips & Moments groups a trip’s photos together.
• Once a month, screenshots and videos. They pile up fastest and are the quickest to judge.
• Let Recently Deleted empty itself after 30 days, unless you need the space sooner and are sure about everything in it.

Common mistakes

• Trying to finish in one weekend. Ten minutes a day gets further than one exhausting Sunday.
• Deleting without a copy. iCloud Photos mirrors deletions, so keep your own copy of anything precious before a big cleanup.
• Forgetting Recently Deleted, then wondering why storage did not move.
• Deleting on the iPhone to save iCloud space without knowing they are linked. With iCloud Photos on, both go down together. That is fine if it is what you want.
• Organizing before cleaning, and filing photos that will be deleted anyway.

The bottom line

Keep a copy of what matters, clear screenshots, duplicates and long videos first, then go through the rest in short sessions, always in the same order. Keep when in doubt, and empty Recently Deleted only when you are sure and need the space. The Photos app can do all of it. PrunePic makes the one-by-one part faster and remembers where you stopped. PrunePic vs Apple Photos explains when the built-in tools are enough.