How to Delete Multiple Photos on iPhone at Once (or All of Them)

In Photos, tap Select, then put your finger on a photo and drag sideways, then down, without lifting. Every photo you pass over gets selected, and holding your finger near the bottom edge keeps the grid scrolling. Tap the trash icon, confirm, then empty Recently Deleted, or you won't get any space back. There's no Select All in the main Library, so for a whole library use Photos on a Mac. And if iCloud Photos is on, everything you delete on the phone disappears from iCloud too.

The phone says storage is almost full, so you open Photos and start deleting. Tap, tap, tap, trash, confirm. Ten minutes later you've removed forty pictures, and the library still says 14,000. There must be a faster way, and there is. It's just hidden behind a gesture Apple never explains.

Select hundreds of photos with one drag

1. Open Photos and scroll to the part of the library you want to clear.
2. Pinch the grid closed to zoom out, so more thumbnails fit on the screen. Every drag then covers more photos.
3. Tap Select in the top-right corner.
4. Put your finger on the first photo and drag sideways first, across the row, then down. If you drag straight down, the grid scrolls instead of selecting. Once the selection starts, it follows your finger row by row.
5. Keep your finger near the bottom edge to make the grid scroll while you're still selecting. That's how you sweep a whole month or year in one go. Lift when you've gone far enough.
6. Grabbed too many? Start a drag on a photo that's already selected, and that drag deselects instead.
7. Tap the trash icon (on some iOS versions it's behind the ••• button) and confirm.

The count at the top tells you how many you have. Check it before you confirm. A slip of the thumb can grab a row you meant to keep, and it's much easier to fix before you tap Delete than after.

Then empty Recently Deleted, or nothing changes

This is why people delete 800 photos and see their storage barely move. Deleted photos go to Recently Deleted and keep using space for about 30 days, in case you change your mind. Open Photos, scroll to Utilities (on iOS 26, open Collections first), tap Recently Deleted, unlock it with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode, tap Select, then Delete All. Full walkthrough here. Once that album is empty, the space shows up in Settings › General › iPhone Storage.

Before you delete a lot: the iCloud trap

If iCloud Photos is on, your iPhone and iCloud share one library. Deleting 2,000 photos on the phone deletes the same 2,000 from iCloud, your iPad and your Mac. That's fine if you meant to get rid of them. It's a disaster if you were "making room on the phone" because you thought iCloud had a copy.

To check, open Settings, tap your name, then iCloud › Photos. If sync is on and you want the photos kept somewhere, there are two safe orders:

• Copy first, then delete. Move the photos to a computer or a USB drive, open a few of them to check the copy works, and only then bulk-delete. How to move iPhone photos to an external drive.
• Keep them in iCloud, free the phone. You can't delete from the phone only while sync is on. What works instead, and the catch with each option.

Deleting all photos at once

First, be sure what you want, because the right tool depends on why you're doing it.

You're trading in, selling or handing down the phone

Don't delete the photos at all. Make sure the new phone or a backup has them, then erase the old phone with Settings › General › Transfer or Reset iPhone › Erase All Content and Settings. That wipes every photo from that phone in one step, and it doesn't touch your iCloud library. Deleting them in Photos first, with iCloud Photos on, would delete them from your iCloud library too. If the phone is going to one of your kids, here's how to wipe it and set it up as theirs.

You want a clean camera roll on the phone you're keeping

On the iPhone itself, drag-select in batches as above. It works, but at 20,000 photos it's tedious. If you have a Mac, it's much faster:

• Using iCloud Photos: open Photos on a Mac signed in to the same Apple Account, choose Edit › Select All (Command-A), or click one photo and Shift-click another to select everything between them, then press Delete and confirm. The deletes sync to the iPhone. The iCloud rule still applies. They're gone from every device.
• Not using iCloud Photos: connect the iPhone by cable and use Image Capture on the Mac. Import everything to a folder or drive first, check it, then select all in Image Capture and delete from the device. It only sees photos actually stored on the phone.

When you don't want to delete everything, just the junk

Most people searching for this don't actually want an empty camera roll. They want the 3,000 photos they'll never look at gone, while the ones they care about stay. Drag-select is no help there, because the junk is spread through the whole library: the twelve near-identical shots of one sunset, screenshots of parking spots from 2023, a 9-minute video of a ceiling.

The Photos app can help a bit on its own. Look under Utilities for the Duplicates album, which merges exact copies, and under Media Types for Screenshots and Videos, where drag-select works well because everything in the album is the same kind of thing. Our guides to clearing screenshots and duplicates go step by step.

Rather have the junk gathered for you? Phone Diet (we make it) groups duplicates, near-identical shots, blurry photos, screenshots, screen recordings and large videos, each list with a Select All that skips photos you've protected and always keeps one photo from every group.

It also has a Swipe to Clean mode: pick a month, swipe left on what goes and right on what stays, and nothing is deleted until you confirm at the end. Anything it removes also goes to Recently Deleted, and stays in the app's Recover tab for 30 days by default, so a wrong swipe can be undone. To be straight about it, if you want to delete everything or one solid stretch of dates, the steps above are all you need. You don't need an app for that.

Common questions

Is there a Select All button in the iPhone Photos app?

Not in the main Library grid. Some albums offer Select All after you tap Select, but the Library does not, so the fast way on the phone is to tap Select, then drag your finger sideways and down across the thumbnails. Pinch to zoom out first so each drag covers more photos. To select a whole library at once, use the Photos app on a Mac signed in to the same iCloud Photos library, where Command-A selects everything.

If I delete photos from my iPhone, are they deleted from iCloud?

Yes, if iCloud Photos is on. The iPhone, iCloud and your other devices share one library, so a bulk delete on the phone removes the same photos everywhere after they leave Recently Deleted. Copy anything you want to keep to a computer or drive first, or turn iCloud Photos off on that iPhone once everything has uploaded.

Why didn't my iPhone storage go up after I deleted hundreds of photos?

Deleted photos move to Recently Deleted and keep using space for about 30 days. Open Photos, go to Utilities (on iOS 26 open Collections first), tap Recently Deleted, unlock it, tap Select, then Delete All. The space comes back once that album is empty.

Should I delete all my photos before trading in or selling my iPhone?

No. Deleting them one batch at a time is slow, and with iCloud Photos on it deletes them from iCloud too. Make sure your new phone or a backup has everything, then erase the old phone with Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings. That removes every photo from that phone without touching iCloud.