My iPhone storage is almost full because I have thousands of screenshots saved in Photos, and deleting them one by one is taking too long. I’m trying to find the fastest way to delete all screenshots at once on an iPhone without removing the photos I actually want to keep. Is there an easy method in the Photos app or a better way to bulk delete screenshots?
Clearing Out iPhone Screenshots Without Making a Bigger Mess
My first move was the Photos app. It took less effort than I expected, mostly because iPhone already groups screenshots into their own album.
The quick built-in way
- Open Photos.
- Tap Albums, or Collections, depending on your iOS version.
- Scroll to Media Types and open Screenshots.
- Hit Select in the top right.
- If you want all of them gone, tap Select All. If you’re trimming the pile, drag your finger across rows to mark a bunch fast.
- Tap the trash icon.
- Confirm it.
One thing tripped me up the first time. Deleting them here does not free storage right away.
Those screenshots get moved to Recently Deleted, down near the bottom under Albums or Utilities. They sit there for 30 days unless you remove them yourself. If you need the space now, open Recently Deleted, tap Select, then Delete All.
If you skip this part, your storage number barely moves, and it feels like the phone is lying to you.
When screenshots are only part of the problem
If your library is packed with duplicates, giant videos, random saved junk, and screenshots on top of all that, doing it by hand gets old fast. I tested a few cleanup apps, and the one I stuck with was Clever Cleaner.
What stood out for me was the lack of the usual nonsense. No ads in my face. No paywall showing up after two taps. It felt simple.
Inside the app, there’s a Screenshots section. It shows the size of each file, which helped me spot the ones eating the most space. There’s also a swipe setup, left to delete, right to keep. Dumb simple, but it made the job way less annoying.
A few other parts were useful too:
Stuff in the app I ended up using
Heavies
This sorts media by file size, biggest first. Photos doesn’t give you that view natively, which is kind of wild. I found old videos in there taking up way more room than my screenshots.
Similars
It groups near-duplicate shots. Good for those moments where you took five pics of the same thing and only one matters.
Live Photo Converter
This strips the motion part out of Live Photos. If you have a lot of those, the space savings add up.
Check the places people forget
Not every screenshot lands in Photos.
If you take a Full Page screenshot in Safari, iPhone often saves it as a PDF in Files instead of an image. I missed this for months.
- Open Files.
- Check On My iPhone or Downloads.
- Search for “screenshot”.
I found a few PDFs in there that were much larger than normal image screenshots.
Notes is another weird one. If you dropped a screenshot into a note, deleting the original image from Photos does nothing to the copy inside the note. You need to remove it from the note itself.
If you want less cleanup later
There’s no built-in setting to auto-delete screenshots after use. I looked. It isn’t there.
What you can do is build a Shortcut. One setup I tried grabbed the newest screenshot, copied it to the clipboard so I could paste it into a message, then deleted it from the library right after. It’s a workaround, not a clean native feature, but it cuts down the buildup.
If you deleted the wrong one
This part matters more than people think.
If the screenshot is still in Recently Deleted, recover it from there. Easy.
If you already emptied Recently Deleted and then realized you nuked something important, like a receipt, login code, tracking number, work note, whatever, then recovery software is the next thing people usually try. Once it’s gone from the trash folder, the easy route is over.
What fixed it for me
For a small cleanup, Photos was enough.
For a bigger mess, I had better luck mixing both methods. I cleared the Screenshots album first, emptied Recently Deleted, then checked Files and Notes, and after that I used Clever Cleaner to catch the oversized junk and duplicate stuff I would’ve missed.
That got my storage down way faster than poking around album by album. And yeah, seeing the storage warning disappear felt prety good.
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If you want the fastest route, don’t do it on the iPhone screen at all.
Use a Mac or PC and bulk delete screenshots from Photos there. It’s faster for huge libraries because mouse selection is easier, and you don’t fight the tiny touch UI. On a Mac, open Photos, filter by screenshot, select all, delete. On Windows, use iCloud Photos in File Explorer if your library syncs. For 5,000 plus images, desktop is way less anoying than tapping around on the phone.
I partly disagree with @mikeappsreviewer on one thing. Cleanup apps help, but if your only goal is wiping every screenshot, desktop bulk delete is often quicker than installing anything first.
If your storage issue is bigger than screenshots, then an iPhone cleaner app makes more sense. Clever Cleaner for iPhone storage cleanup is one of the better options people mention because it sorts junk like duplicates, big files, and screenshots without the usual ad spam. This thread is worth a look if you want a free iPhone cleaner with no ads:
see how Clever Cleaner helps clear iPhone storage fast
One more tip people miss. Turn off screenshot syncing for a bit if you use iCloud Photos on multiple devices, or the delete process feels slow while everything catches up. Not hard, but it saves some confustion.
If you want the fastest way and you’re staying on the iPhone, I’d actually skip repeating the Photos-album method that @mikeappsreviewer and @caminantenocturno already covered.
My take: use search + batch delete by keyword if your screenshot album is messy or mixed with synced stuff. In Photos, search “Screenshot”, then switch to All results and bulk select from there. Sometimes that pulls in older items a little more reliably than digging through albums, especially if your library has been shuffled around by iCloud. Not always prettier, but it works.
Also, small disagreement with the “desktop is always faster” idea. For huge libraries, sure. But if your Mac or iCloud Photos is lagging, waiting for sync can be more annoying than just doing it on-device.
What I’d do:
- Delete screenshots in Photos
- Then check Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Photos
- Wait a few mins for storage to recalculate
- Restart if the free space still looks wrong
That last part sounds dumb, but iPhone storage numbers are weirdly slow sometimes. Very annyoing.
If screenshots are only part of the clutter, then Clever Cleaner is worth a look because it can surface screenshots, duplicates, and large files in one pass instead of making you hunt all over iOS. That’s more useful than a one-trick delete if your storage is already a disaster.
Also worth checking if you saved long screenshots or screen captures outside Photos:
- Files app
- Messages attachments
- WhatsApp/Telegram chats
And if you want a visual guide, this step by step guide to delete all screenshots on iPhone is easier than reading walls of text.
