Taking photos with our smartphones has become so commonplace and easy these days that it’s easy to fill our camera rolls with hundreds or even thousands of photos without realizing it. If you see that one day you have fallen into this situation and want to delete all photos or photo albums from your iPhone to start over, we will show you how to do it. It’s easier than you think. Remember, though, that deleting your iPhone Photos app will erase them from iCloud. So first move all the photos you want to keep to iCloud.
Read more: How to Delete Search and Browsing History on iPhone
QUICK RESPONSE
To delete all photos from your iPhone, tap the Select button, then the first one you want to delete. Then swipe your finger up and down the screen, which will automatically select the rest. You can deselect photos by tapping them once. Then press the Trash can icon. You must then delete the Recently Deleted folder to permanently delete them.
ACCESS KEY SECTIONS
How to Delete All Photos on Your iPhone
To delete all photos from your iPhone, start by going to the Photos app. Faucet Select in the upper right corner of the screen.
Tap on the first photo you want to delete and a blue checkmark will appear in the corner. You can also press Select alland all photos on the screen will be selected with blue checkmarks.
- To choose all photos, tap Select all or slide your finger across the screen. When your finger hovers over a photo, it will be selected and a blue check mark will be added to the photo.
- If you want to keep a photo, tap it once and the blue tick will disappear.
- When you’ve selected the photos you want to delete, tap the trash can icon at the bottom of the screen.
How to Permanently Delete All Photos from Your iPhone
The previous method will remove the photos from your main screen, but they are still stored in the Recently Deleted Photos app folder for another 30 days. This is in case you have any doubts and want to recover one of the photos. Or maybe you accidentally deleted a photo, in which case you can easily recover it again.
If you’d rather the photos not be on your phone for another 30 days, go to Albums from the Photos app. Scroll to Utilities and press Recently Deleted.
Press the Select button at the top of the screen. At the bottom of the screen you will now see a Delete all option. Select this and all images will be permanently deleted.
How to Delete All Photos from Your iPhone Using a Mac
If you have a Mac computer, you can delete photos even faster.
- Open the Photos app on Mac and click on the first photo you want to delete.
- Go to Edit and click Select all. This will select all images on the page.
- To delete, right-click and choose Wipe off. Or use the CMD key and delete key together on the keyboard.
- Go to Recently Deleted and empty the file if you do not want to take advantage of the 30-day grace period.
Read more: How to Delete Contacts on an iPhone
FAQs
Yes. iCloud is a cloud sync service, not a cloud backup service. There is a big difference between the two. Make changes on your device and iCloud will change accordingly.
Usually the reason why you can’t delete photos on your iPhone is that they are synced to another device (eg iPad, Windows PC or Mac). If your photos are synced to your computer with Windows iTunes or macOS Finder, they can only be deleted when connecting your iPhone to this device and using this program.
If you turn off iCloud Photo Library, photos on your iPhone that weren’t taken on that device will be deleted. However, they will remain on the device they were taken from.