For an entire year I’ve wanted to be able to do this easily. And I think I’ve now found the best way to do this without the possible side-effect of losing all of your photos on your iPhone.
One of the problems with the iPhone is that you can’t delete all of the photos you’ve taken within from within the iPhone’s interface. If you, like me, sync your iPhone photos with your iPhoto Library then you’ve no doubt noticed that iPhoto does let you delete all of the photos you are currently importing. But, if you’ve imported several times then iPhoto will only allow you to delete the current photos being imported.
So you’re only option has been to create a new iPhoto Library, import all of your iPhone’s photos again, and ask iPhoto to delete the photos when the task is complete. Or, you could click delete on every single photo on your iPhone one-at-a-time.
Solution: Use Image Capture.
My iPhoto Library has become very cumbersome. Opening iPhoto is a chore. Also, with the iPhone in its dock, iPhoto will compare its library with the one on the iPhone prior to allow you to import the new photos – and this takes a very long time. So, I’m going to show you how to use Image Capture, an application on your Macintosh that you may not even know you have, to create a backup of your iPhone’s photos and, subsequentally, delete them from the iPhone – in one step.
- Mount your iPhone using either your dock or the iPhone’s USB cable.
- If you have iTunes or iPhoto set to open automatically, eject the iPhone from both of these applications.
- Open Image Capture.app ((You can find this application in your Applications folder.))
- Create a new directory to dump your iPhone photos to.
- Click “Options” and select “Delete items from camera after downloading”
- Click “Download all”.
Here are some photos of the process.
Image capture.
New folder.
Delete the photos.
Empty camera roll result.
Depending on how many photos you have on your iPhone this process may take a little while. When the downloading is complete, the iPhone’s photos will be deleted – permanently.
What if you want to save some of the photos on your iPhone? This can be done but it takes some work. After you’ve imported all of these photos into your iPhoto Library, create a new album in iPhoto called something like “iPhone camera roll”. In your iTunes preferences for this iPhone ((You’ll need to mount the iPhone again to see these options in iTunes.)) select this album for syncing. This way you only save the photos that you have put into this album.
I hope this helps those of you that want to delete their iPhone’s photos in a quick and easy way without worrying about losing your photos!
Update! Wiibart on Viddler uploaded a video of this in action. So I’m sharing it here.
90 Comments
thank you so much for this info, though I was going to be stuck with a load of junk pics that had synced themselves onto my iphone!
Thanks so much for this! This is by far the easiest example I was able to google, wew.
Yeah this is a good solution. It has been such a pain managing photos on my iphone.
Thanks for the info. Now all I need is a similar process to delete all the 600 contacts I accidentally synched with my gmail account and cant get rid of unless I delete them one by one. I find it funny they designed the iphone this way.
Peter Kure: Just adjust your Address book on your computer and have iTunes overwrite the information. You can do this in iTunes under the “Info” tab for your iPhone.
Great EASY solution, works fast !!
Thanks
cb
Thanks! I’d been deleting photos individually and I appreciate this quick and easy tip to get rid of all the photos at once. I followed your instructions and it worked like a charm!
hi
i really apprecitae and thank you.
but this doesnot solve my problem . idont have macintosh .
how can i delete aal my pics in iphone. every time i sync it with my laptop, the photos in photo library get copied to iphone. please help
Dhillon: Are you asking on a Windows computer? I am not sure what that procedure is. Maybe someone else can help?
Dhillon, that’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. Lots of people say the only way to take pictures off an iPhone is to take them off the computer and re-sync (something my father doesn’t want to do) But I’m pretty sure that you can also delete it by simply moving the photos you don’t want on your iPhone to a different folder, then re-syncing the iPhone.
can this be done with a pc with vista
Thanks so much! You saved me a lot of time and energy.
Thanks! Best solution of them all
It is AMAZING that there even needs to be posted solution for this. I love this phone but Apple’s insistence on doing everything THEIR WAY is unbelievable. The simplest, cheapest, most rubbish phones / digital cameras out there can be accessed by usb and photos can be removed/deleted like any other file. Why do they have to be SO DIFFICULT! ARgh! Watch out Apple, you’re heading to be the next Microsoft.
Colin, your method sounds great… but when I went to use it Image Capture said I didn’t have any photos to download.
The problem is that I’ve already managed to delete the camera roll when I downloaded it to my Mac. However, when I synced my iPhone it copied all the photos in iPhoto over to my iPhone into two different directories which cannot be deleted even one photo at a time. There’s no icon to delete when I open individual photos in these directories.
Help?
Celeste: It sounds like you have iTunes setup to sync your photos to your phone. Simply open iTunes, go to the Photos tab (when your iPhone is connected) and only select the albums that you want to have up-to-date upon sync.
Delete in all Camera Roll photos in Windows
When you plug an iphone into a Windows PC, a IPhone drive is created for which the only contents are the iphone camera photo roll – you can copy and paste from here and also delete all photos.
it sounds like you guys just need to adjust your line of thinking. an easier way to do it is to think if your camera roll as an inbox that you want to constantly keep empty. import the photos into iphoto every time and delete them from the camera. if you want them to sync back to the camera, just create a smart album within iphoto. make one condition, “camera model is apple iphone”. this will create a new smart album with all of the photos that you’ve taken with your iphone. now adjust your sync settings to keep thyis folder synced with your iphone. now, every time you import new photos, it will delete them form your iphone, and synced back via the smart album. this keeps your camera roll empty, but you still have your new photos. you can delete the photo(s) that you don’t want from your iphoto library, and they will be removed from your phone. does that suit your needs?
Thank you, this was a great quick way to delete my photos.
You win the prize – excellent explanation!
Thanks Steve Lucky,
Your solutions sounds like what Apple intended. Shame they didn’t set this up by default!
Best, M.
Thanks a lot! You helped med save about 400 mb!
With all the latest technology I find it totally bizarre that you have to go through this whole process – delete, recycle bin or whatever – it should be the touch of a button – we are in the 21st century afterall.
I found a very easy way to get rid of all the pictures if you want em all off. Just go to your photos tab (when Iphone is connected) and make sure it is syncd, but make sure the selected folders button is clicked. and make sure you have no folders selected. then apply it. Then when you go to use it there shouldn’t be any photos.
Thank you so much. I had over 4000 pictures on my iphone and you helped me to get rid of them all!
Ok, no one has been able to answer how to delete photos from other photo albums besides the camera roll on a PC. The only pics available through explorer are the ones in the camera roll. The other pics I have downloaded through emails are not available to be deleted either in the phone, through ITunes or through the folders.
cheers Colin, very helpful posting – nice and simple solution to a weirdly tedious problem
Image Capture has a “Delete” button in the toolbar, so you don’t even have to download the pictures. Just select-all (cmd-a) and press Delete.
Thanks for the tip to use Image Capture!
@Graham Perks: When I use that function my iPhone just restarts and no pictures are deleted. Have to go, one by one.
Is it really supposed to be this hard?
the issue with not being able to prevent unwanted photos from being synced is easy.
Create a new folder on your desktop titled “iphone sync” and using your PC dump only the photos that you want on your iPhone into this folder. When you sync – use that folder and that’s it!
If you want to get rid of a photo on your iphone simply take it out of the folder you created and re-sync.
this is the best way I know how.
Thanx! It works well. Better than pressing the trash icon in camera roll a few hundred times.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
THANKS A LOT!!!!! I use LR mainly and it was bothering me the use of iPhoto to erase content…
Wow, thanks. Been wanting to do this forever (a few hundred pics? That’s nothin’…) Worked like a charm.
Thanks. That was useful.
I just did a google search for this problem and your post came up first.
I love that it was your advice I am following to solove this problem!
Yeah.
That is awesome.
Also, after your phone is connected you can go to:
My Pictures on your computer
Click “get pictures from camera or scanner”
Then Click “Advanced Users Only”
Finally Click “Delete All Pictures on Camera”
Thi should only take a few secs to a minute depending on the number of pics you have.
An easier way to do this with Image Capture is just to click on “Download Some” then select all of the pictures and choose “Delete” (“Delete All” doesn’t seem to work) from the “Edit” menu.
GREAT !!! Simple finally got my memory back !!
Great stuff mate, worked like a charm, this had baffled me for ages, a simple and effective solution, thanks for taking the time to post this, much appreciated.
Thank you so much! Simple and works nice.
I can’t even delete pics one by one, which is what I’d like to do. the ‘camera’ roll (photos taken using iphone) does have a trash can icon, but the new folders (imported from iphotos) does not, so i appear to be stuck with them, unless i take the syncing option?
Can anyone tell me how to delete individual pics?
thanks
Hi there…did u get an answer re: inability to delete one by one photos when u dont see the “trashcan”icon on photos that were uploaded? I’m having the same prob and the answers mainly pertain to using a mac….I dont have a mac..I have Windows Vista, but no one seems to know how to do it via Vista?
Any help u can give me, using windows would be most helpful.
Thx….
This worked perfectly. Thanks for posting the clear instructions for this solution.
Thanks so much! Worked like a charm – you’re the best!
thanks bud, much appreciated
thanks SO much, I have been struggling with this through two iPhones.
very generous of you to figure this out.
Thanks for this — very hand indeed.
Like many others I am amazed and hugely disappointed with Apple in that they appear to be getting more and more stupid and Microsoft-like: overlooking such an obvious basic requirement, forcing us to do things in a dumbed-down stepwise fashion and utterly failing to think from the users’ point of view. Similar to the way Spotlight will only sort by kind, size and date last opened, and won’t allow columns for “date created” and “date last modified”.
To clear things up for those who are trying to get rid of the separate photo albums in their IPhones….In windows the Iphone creates a folder in your Picture file called I-Pod Photo Cache. You have to delete this file before resyncing your photos to your I-phone or else your I-Phone will create a duplicate folder of the same pictures in your Photos called I-phone photo Library as well as the folder in your windows Picture folder where you have put the photos you want on your I-Phone. DOn’t forget to Delete that I-Phone Photo Cache file or you will have the same pictures in two separate files
@Barry: Hi. I had folders with names of 100Apple through 109Apple. I always copy pics to computer then delete them from the iPhone folders, so that what I have on my iPhone is a small # of pics. I’ve noticed that the folders are not reused; they just keep making more. A few months ago I didn’t have 108 or 109Apple. Now I have 100Apple through 109Apple and before reading your post, 100 thru 108 were empty, and 109 had the most recent pictures in it.
Ok, so per your instructions, I got rid of the photo cache folder (actually renamed it) and then for the first time ever, when I docked the iphone it didn’t show my iphone in windows explorer. That was a good sign. I took the iPhone out of the dock, took a couple of pictures, and docked the iphone again. I expected to see just 100Apple. Instead I see the 100Apple through 109Apple. 109 Apple has the 2 pictures in it and the other folders are all empty. I want to get rid of all these extra folders. Do you know how I can do that? Thanks. BTW my most recent pic name is IMG_9772.
Hope you can help!
thanks.
Great tip, thanks for sharing!
Corné.
Thank you for your post. IT HELPED A LOT! I did what you said.. but by mistake i changed my import settings.. I have windows vista.. and now whenever i plug in the usb cable to my computer it downloads the pictures and deletes them from the iphone (thats precisely what i wanted) BUT i changed the path of the iphone photo folder.. now i dont know how to change the settings back?? any help??
I’ve checked my programs folder in XP and do not have Open Image Capture app. Where do i get. Can’t seem to Google for it.
Thank you so much for sharing this information! It was very helpful!
Thanks! Your directions worked perfectly!
Thanks, this worked perfectly. Google to the rescue
thanks SO much!
thanks
Brilliant! Genius! Thank you so much – I would have never thought of that. I had 800+ photos and it was a total drag.
You rock!
I appreciate the information. Great help for us who know enough about Macs, but still need a little boost of assistance from others.
Cheers
how do i do it on vista ?
Using the Image Capture app as a method to delete photos from my iPhone that I didn’t want to import never came to mind.
Thanks!
“Create a new directory to dump your iPhone photos to”.
“Create a directory” – you mean a folder?
“dump your iPhone photos to” – do I dump them? andwhat do you mean by “dump them”
Sorry to be so stupid but you have lost this non technical user here!
Ronnie: In the world of computers a folder is actually a directory. So, yes. Create a new folder. Dump the photos simply means “save them there”.
ran into this too
with some 3000pics
Well on WINDOWS, just go into the the phone which is recognized as a camera from explorer
Within a DCIM folder you’ll find several Apple101, Apple104, Apple999 folder
simply delete the files in there directly.
relatively hassle free and fast.
should be possible in finder on mac too nay ?
@blimp: I do what you said frequently. I just want to delete the folders. I have all these empty folders (see my reply above to Barry).
thanks.
Why not just click the “remove” button down below in the acquire application? You can select either all (command-a) or specific pictures to be removed from your iphone in a flash! Without having to re-import them
There is a command A on the iPhone? Haha. Pierpaolo – this is how to remove all photos from an iPhone using a computer.
Who knew I even had Image Capture! Thanks so much for the easy to follow step by step instructions and for solving such an annoying problem for me (and so many others, judging from the responses).
Cheers!
Thanks – worked perfect!! It’s great that folks like you post this to help us newbies – good karma to you!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!! I am a photographer and still couldn’t figure out how to erase my 3000 iPhone pix. So helpful…
Infinitely useful post. Thanks so much!
for pc vista
plug in iphone
go to computers
iphone
internal storage
DCIM
and from there ull find the pictures and u call just hit the delete button
hope that helps
@kathleen: I do what you said frequently. I just want to delete the folders. I have all these empty folders (see my reply above to Barry).
thanks.
very useful post, freed 3 GB space on iPhone.
but iTunes still showing 4,60 GB space used by photoes on iPhone…
I’ve sync just my last iPhoto event… 2 PICTURES=4,60 GB??
;(
Wow. Thanks so much. You saved me a lot of time & frustration. And you had PICTURES. Love it. Glad to add you to people I follow.
It turns out Image Capture also integrates with my scanner. Thanks to you its in my dock now.
Cayce: I saw your reply on Twitter as well. You’re very welcome. I’m glad so many people (well over 500,000 people have seen this post) have found this valuable. Thanks for following!
Image Capture won’t recognize my iPhone when I plug it in (via USB). By default, iTunes pops up, tries synching etc. I eject it from iTunes, exit out of iTunes, launch Image Capture and it says that “No Image Capture device Is connected.” I then click on Devices from the file menu, Browse Devices and the only device it finds is something called Digital Still Camera (which I have to assume is my iPhone b/c when I pull out the USB cord it disappears), but I can’t seem to click on it to get more info or to connect to it really. I tried clicking on the “Connected” checkbox, but nothing appears to change. Any suggestions?
joe s: Don’t eject it from iTunes. You don’t even have to close iTunes. Just open Image Capture. You are ejecting the iPhone and so Image Capture doesn’t see it. Just don’t eject it and you should be good to go.
Didn’t fix the problem. Didn’t really make any difference at all. Perhaps there’s just something wrong with my Image Capture software? Is that possible? I’m running Mac OS X Version 10.5.8 for what its worth and the Image Capture software is Version 4.0 (376)
So you did this?
1. Plug in iPhone.
2. Open Image Capture.
BTW, my Image Capture version is 6.0.
Thanks for the help! Yours was the first result and worked like a charm. My iphoto has imported the pics, but wouldn’t delete them and I need space. I really appreciate it!
You’re welcome Kat!
i cant delete individual pics from my iphone because i dont have the trash can at the bottom that all of my friends seem to have…did i get a faulty iphone?
Shuneka: That is really odd. If you tap once on the photo a menu does not come up on the bottom?
This worked like a charm.
I had over a thousand pics trapped, purposelessly, on my phone; taking up space and laughing at my every attempt to dump them. Thank you, a thousand times!
Doesn’t work for me!
The iPhone icon does show up on Image Capture, but it shows… 33 photos! Exactly the ones I did NOT sync from iPhoto! I DID eject i Phone from both iTunes and iPhoto, quit both apps, and Image Capture insists on recognizing only the 33 photos… God, I’m getting desperate… HELP!
By the way: my computer is a Mac running Snow Leopard & yes, Image Capture is version 6.0… And I can’t delete the photos that exported themselves into my new iPhone! How dumb is this !?
Based on your description it seems as though you’re saying that you’re trying to delete photos that you’ve synced from iPhoto to your iPhone. To change these you need to see the Photos tab in iTunes itself.
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