Comments on: How to: Delete all photos off an iPhone

By: John Marr

John Marr — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:58:29 +0000

Thanks, man. Easy!

By: iigor

iigor — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:45:26 +0000

just ssh into your DCIM/100APPLE -folder, and clear the folder…

By: craig

craig — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 13:56:42 +0000

saved me some drama, thanks! xCx

By: Trent

Trent — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:11:47 +0000

sweet thanks, shame on you iPhoto for not making this easier

By: Richard Graham

Richard Graham — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:28:35 +0000

Found a free program last night called Diskaid, works perfect for transferring and deleting pictures from your iphone

By: John Argueta

John Argueta — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 22:11:47 +0000

Thanks Dude! Couldn’t get any help from Apple Website. This is silly they gotta fix that problem. Maybe in iLife ’11.

By: lalone

lalone — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:11:21 +0000

Thanks

By: toady

toady — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:32:56 +0000

cheers mate, great solution, and so simple.

By: Sasha

Sasha — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:34:21 +0000

thanks so much. Been needing to do this for a long time.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:43:11 +0000

magical

By: PeteJ

PeteJ — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:21:38 +0000

Can someone pls help me I am overseas with out my computer to sync my iPhone 3 g too and need to delete some of my previously synced photos (room issues). I can delete from the camera roll but not the sync pics

By: Timothy

Timothy — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:51:26 +0000

Thanks! This is definitely the best way to delete all photos from iPhone without iPhoto. Now I can delete that useless application and stick to Lightroom. Bravo!

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 13:16:52 +0000

Hmm…image capture downloads the photos but does not delete from iphone…G4 iBook iphone 4…..cheers.

By: shaun wangidjaja

shaun wangidjaja — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:52:06 +0000

you use your suggestion.. to use image capture… now i can actually select and delete what i don’t want in my iphone..

thanks again..

By: Jennifer Roche

Jennifer Roche — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:23:36 +0000

thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Carol

Carol — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 22:16:33 +0000

Thanks a million for this! I’ve been wanting to know how to do it for ages, and this was so quick and easy.

By: Delete iPad photos with Image Capture « Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Delete iPad photos with Image Capture « Moving at the Speed of Creativity — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 02:24:36 +0000

[...] H/T to Colin Devroe. [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:38:07 +0000

Is there any way of deleting from the Photo Library WITHOUT using iTunes please? I am away travelling with my iPhone but without my PC / iTunes, and desperately need to free up some space. Thanks

By: Kurt

Kurt — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:40:34 +0000

Brilliant!

By: Sorry Kirk, I’m taken | That's what I thought.

Sorry Kirk, I’m taken | That's what I thought. — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:24:00 +0000

[...] How to: Delete photos off an iPhone post is the single most popular post on my blog. After several hundred thousand views and 133 [...]

By: MacSmiley

MacSmiley — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:02:47 +0000

Sorry, but Image Capture is built into Mac OS X. It’s not a Windows app.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:28:38 +0000

You are the single greatest human being in the world.

Will… you… marry me???

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:56:05 +0000

Brad: If you want to delete the Photo Library, which is not the Camera Roll (or the images taken with the iPhone), you have to plug the phone into your computer, open iTunes, and set up the options so that no photos are synced from your computer to the iPhone.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:13:30 +0000

Reading throught this and very interesting . But i still dont see a solution to just DELETE the PHOTO LIBRARY completely . ANY HELP APPRECIATED .

By: Red Balfour

Red Balfour — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:51:19 +0000

Fantastic, it worked perfect and in seconds on my P.C. The easiest solution so far. Thank you so much Rob!!!

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:45:45 +0000

Yes!!! VERY IMPORTANT TIP!!!

By: Pukahead

Pukahead — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:06:05 +0000

Actually, THIS tip is very pertinent to this post because many people are confusing “Camera Roll” content with “iPhoto” content on the iPhone. To have BOTH solutions really clarifies things. Camera Roll content can be removed via the trash can or using the posted “en masse” solution in this thread. iPhoto content is the more difficult (less intuitive) issue, and therefore the larger of the 2 problems. So I greatly appreciate getting this solution in this thread. Forget Colin’s attempt to diminish it … this is equally, if not more valuable, than the Camera Roll solution !!!!!!!!

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:56:32 +0000

Good tip. But this post is mostly intended to help with photos taken with the iPhone in the Camera Roll.

By: LG

LG — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:32:09 +0000

Hi,

I just wanted to say that there is a far easier way to dump all of your photos off of your iPhone. I made the mistake of “syncing” my iPhoto library to my iPhone, which just downloaded all of my library albums to my iPhone. Instead of just deleting them one-by-one, in iTunes, under the Photo tab, just uncheck “sync” and it will notify you that it will remove all previously downloaded iPhoto albums. Click “apply” and you’re done! All photos removed!

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:00:48 +0000

Jimmy: You’re right… this method only works with the Camera Roll. You can not delete photos that you’ve synced to the device via iTunes unless you do that via iTunes.

By: sameer chavan

sameer chavan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 08:33:45 +0000

That was a good example. I had a problem to delete some 1000 photos and its shame that apple has no option to select all and delete.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:07:01 +0000

Thanks so much!!!

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:39:19 +0000

Where’s ‘delete’ ?! I only see ‘share’ and ‘copy’ in the bottom of hte phone.

I may have missed something, but your method doesnt seem to clear albums other than the camera roll… I changed the folder structure for my syncing, and now I have ‘photo library’ with 847 pictures, ‘general’ with 544 pics and ‘south africa’ with 303 pics. Photolibrary is the combination of the other two! Everything is duplicated and it wont clear through your method…

Thanks for all your help- Lots of people appreciate this stuff.

Jimmy

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:38:58 +0000

Robert: I believe it depends on where you are sending the photo to. The photos on the iPhone have EXIF data attached to them. One of the pieces of data is ‘orientation’ which would be set to either landscape or portrait. If the destination (such as Flickr or Twitpic) doesn’t read that information then it won’t know which way to display the photo.

I’m sure people are having issues with this but really it is up to the destination service to figure out how to display it. Not Apple’s.

By: Robert Ward

Robert Ward — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:54:32 +0000

Thanks Colin!

Worked perfectly. My iPhone is cleaned up now.

Have you heard of the problem of iPhone users, especially after the recent upgrade, emailing photos taken in portrait mode and those photos come out sideways on the receiving end? Been a lot of discussion on the boards about that problem.

Hopefully you can come up with a fix for that one. Sorry, but you’re a lot of people’s “go-to” guy now!

By: Seb

Seb — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:49:27 +0000

Thanks! I had 1300+ photos and selecting them one by one was not an option!
Thanks again!

By: phoebe

phoebe — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:21:31 +0000

youda youda best

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:47:06 +0000

Thanks Dave. I too just suggested this method for those running iOS4 however, as you pointed out, it is tedious.

By: Colin Devroe

Colin Devroe — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:46:14 +0000

In iOS4 it can be done (sort of) from the iPhone. Here is the procedure: Open Photos app, click the “share arrow” on the top right, select all of the photos you want to delete, click delete.

It is odd that you have to click “share” to “delete” but there it is.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:11:02 +0000

Although not a one-click solution, this seems to work pretty well for me:

1) Launch “Photos” on iPhone
2) Select “Camera Roll”
3) Press [Arrow] Icon in lower right corner (as if you wanted to email or otherwise share the photos)
4) Highlight the photos you want to delete
5) Select “Delete”

Then again, there might be people out there with 100s of photos on their phone and this could be tedious for them. For me (rarely having more than 10-20 photos, it’s a perfect solution, especially since I can select which ones to delete… without having to delete photos one at a time.

By: Stevie

Stevie — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 01:54:14 +0000

Over 250 photos to be ticked! That’s not the best solution.

By: Stevie

Stevie — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 01:50:43 +0000

Well here we are half way through 2010, just installed iOS4 and your method for removing those iPhone photos is still the only way to do it en masse. Why doesn’t iTunes or iPhone just have a delete all button? Thanks for your great help.

By: Hawk in Winter

Hawk in Winter — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 19:57:52 +0000

Thank you for this post. The iPhone really should have a way to do this from within its own interface :/

By: kyls

kyls — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:46:59 +0000

Thankyou, very easy explanation of the steps to delete all photos from the iphone.

By: Elaine

Elaine — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 19:14:15 +0000

lmao you are brilliant. I did the image capture thing but like your solution better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:31:37 +0000

You are awesome!!! Thanks so much for the tip!

By: CC

CC — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:46:43 +0000

This is the greatest easy way to delete over 9000 pics on my iphone.
Then I can choose whatever I want to download to my iphone.
Thanks a lot.

By: Derek

Derek — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 21:13:15 +0000

Why is everyone fussing about with itunes and image capture? Just open your camera roll, click the little icon at the bottom that usually means email, the check off all the ones you want to delete. so easy..

By: Jann Cook

Jann Cook — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:06:25 +0000

Oh, my gosh–thank you! I was able to use Image Capture on my IMac and fix the photo problem I was having downloading my IPhone pictures–this worked GREAT!

By: Pops Hazel Basa

Pops Hazel Basa — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:33:05 +0000

i dit but still the pictures still there.,,