The 7 Best Photo Deleting Apps

September 09, 2024

If you’re snap-happy, organizing your iPhone’s camera roll and cleaning up photos can become tedious. Chores like comparing similar photos to select the best of the bunch, deleting useless screenshots, and weeding out poorly taken photos are time-consuming and irritating.

Wondering how to clean up photos on your iPhone quickly and easily? You can free up your phone storage by picking a photo deleting iPhone app from the list below.

Before We Begin to Clean Up Your iPhone’s Photos...

You should note a few important points before proceeding with photo deleting apps:

When you delete photos from your iPhone, keep in mind that they end up in the Recently Deleted folder of the Photos app. Until you empty this folder, you won’t reclaim the space created by trashing the photos from your phone.
- To get rid of the deleted photos for good, open the Recently Deleted folder in the Photos app. Next, tap Select and then hit Delete All. Your phone will automatically clear photos from this folder after they sit in it for 30 days.
- Note that this folder lets you recover deleted photos on your iPhone, so make sure you want to erase them permanently before doing so.
It’s best to manually go through the photos and other media that an app has lined up for bulk deletion. This will ensure that you don’t lose any valuable files accidentally.
You’ll need to be extra careful while deleting photos from your iCloud Photo Library. Otherwise, you might end up losing important images from all your Apple devices and iCloud as well.

Now let’s take a look at the best photo deleting apps we have chosen for this task.

1. Smart Cleaner

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With high ratings and more than 90,000 reviews, Smart Cleaner is one of the most popular photo deleting apps for an iPhone user.

First, specify a cleaning time period for the app to consolidate your photos from. Next, select a category to start cleaning up your iPhone’s photos. Smart Cleaner sorts your images into categories such as Screenshots, Live Photos, Photo Notes, and even Videos. For similar pictures, the app automatically gives you a Best Photo or Video suggestion to help you decide which media to keep.

Besides cleaning up your iPhone’s photos, you can also use Smart Cleaner to organize your contacts, get rid of old calendar events, and more to tidy up your iPhone.

Download: Smart Cleaner (Free, subscription available)

2. Slidebox

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If you’re looking to delete bulk photos in one easy sweep, Slidebox is an amazing option. Slidebox integrates directly with the iOS Photos app so that any changes you make in Slidebox are automatically displayed in Photos.

Basically, Slidebox works as a photo sorting assistant. Using Slidebox can significantly shorten the time required to clean up photos on your iPhone. As you scroll through your Photo Library in Slidebox you’ll swipe photos up to trash them and swipe sideways to scroll between duplicates.

You can easily open the albums pre-generated in the Photos app for sorting or create brand new albums of your favorite photos worth saving. You can use Slidebox for up to 10,000 photos before you’ll need to purchase a subscription.

Download: Slidebox (Free, subscription available)

3. Gemini Photos

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Wondering if Gemini Photos has anything to do with the duplicate file finder Mac app Gemini 2? Yes, it does. MacPaw, the developer of Gemini, decided to clean up your iPhone’s photos as well through Gemini Photos.

This photo deleting app automatically selects the bad photos cluttering your phone and serves them up for review. You’ll see everything from blurry photos and duplicates to screenshots and photos with text. Whether you want to follow the app’s recommendation and trash these photos in bulk or keep any of them is up to you.

You’ll also find sets of similar photos and a Keep recommendation from the app for the best photo in a set. However, this feature is available only with a free trial for the first three days after you install the app. After that, you’ll need a paid subscription for it.

How to clean up your iPhone’s photos that don’t fall under any of Gemini’s preset categories? You can find them in the Other folder. All you need to do is swipe down to delete a photo or swipe up to retain it.

Want to leave certain photos (such as those in your iPhone’s Hidden Album) out of future scans? No problem. You can add them to the app’s Ignore List. With Gemini Photos, you can also delete your whole photo library in one shot.

Download: Gemini Photos (Subscription required, free trial available)

4. Phone Cleaner

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Instead of sorting through your gallery and swiping to delete photos, Phone Cleaner works by sorting your iPhone photos and files by size. You can then maximize storage space by deleting unnecessary photos, videos, and other files. This is incredibly helpful if you’ve already deleted most of your screenshots and duplicates.

Use this app to clean up your iPhone’s photos using four different methods. Sorting by file size is a great option for creating space, but you can also sort using filters, by web, or by similar. Sorting by similar is the fastest way to remove duplicate photos from your iPhone.

Download: Phone Cleaner (Free, subscription available)

5. Cleanup

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Cleanup is the most user-friendly and customizable photo deleting app on this list. Upon the initial app launch, you will be asked a short series of questions. These cover everything from your reasons for using the app to how much time you currently have to focus on cleaning up photos on your iPhone.

One of the best options for this app is the customizable aspect. If you want to delete mass portions of your Photo Library in one go, this app can quickly help. It also is great for using the “swipe to delete” method.

Download: Cleanup (Free, subscription available)

6. Flic

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Flic is basically Tinder for your iPhone’s photos. The platform is incredibly basic. Swipe left on photos from your gallery you want to delete and swipe right on photos you want to keep.

Once you get to the end of your photos—or when you want to stop—tap the trash can to permanently delete the photos from your iPhone. After you’ve done a giant photo sweep, we suggest doing some album organization in the Photos app if you used this app.

One of the really cool things about Flic is that it immediately tells you how much memory you are saving by deleting certain photos. It’s a great way to encourage you to thoroughly clean up photos on your iPhone.

Download: Flic (Free, premium version available)

7. Cleaner

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Instead of sorting your photos into a long list of categories, Cleaner has a simple, direct interface. Choose to focus on all your duplicate photos or similar photos by tapping the respective options on the main screen. If you’d like to clean up your iPhone’s photos and videos by file size, use Cleaner’s File Cleaning option.

To free up more of your iPhone’s storage, you can also use Cleaner to compress your photos and videos without worrying about losing media resolution.

Download: Cleaner (Free, in-app purchases available)

Clean Up Your iPhone’s Photos for More Storage

One of the major reasons for an iPhone photo purge is to save iPhone storage space. Occasionally, even though it seems you have deleted a plethora of pictures, the available storage space remains the same.

This can be really frustrating if you’re getting close to your iPhone storage max capacity. Don’t fear. There are a few solutions to try when your iPhone photos continue using space even after deleting photos.

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