How to delete all photos from your iPhone

Photos can quickly fill up your iPhone’s storage. Sometimes, the best way to free up some space on your device is to offload the hundreds of pictures you have into the cloud, then delete the originals.

If necessary, you can first backup the images using Apple’s own iCloud, or other services such as Google Photos – which comes with unlimited free storage for images up to 16MP. Once that’s done, here’s how to delete all of the photos from your iPhone.

1. Launch the Photos app.
2. Tap ‘Photos’ on the bottom left of the screen.
3. Select ‘All Photos’.
4. Tap ‘Select’ on the top right of the screen.
5. Here’s the slightly fiddly part: touch the final photo in your camera roll and gently drag your finger up the screen. Keep your finger in position.
6. If done correctly, the album should continue to scroll upwards, selecting all of the photos in the process. You’ll know this is happening because the thumbnails will each be given a blue tick.
7. It can sometimes take a few tries to get this right. Sometimes it can be easier to tap the final photo in the album, then try to touch and drag upwards from the second-to-last image.
8. To select all photos, wait until the album has scrolled all the way to the top.
9. With all photos selected, tap the ‘Trash’ icon to delete them.

This will remove the photos from your main camera roll, but they will still be on your phone in the ‘recently deleted’ folder. To fully remove them from your handset you’ll need to:

1. Go back to Albums, then scroll down to ‘Recently Deleted’.
2. In this folder, tap ‘Select’ on the top right of the screen.
3. Tap ‘Delete All’ on the bottom left of the screen.
4. Finally, confirm you want to delete the photos and they’ll be gone.

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