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How to free up iPhone storage by cleaning up your photos

Photos and videos are usually the biggest use of iPhone storage. Here's how to clear out the ones you don't need, quickly and safely.

On most iPhones, the Photos library takes more space than anything else. You can check in Settings › General › iPhone Storage. The fastest way to win space back is to delete the photos you'll never look at again: duplicates of the same shot, blurry pictures, screenshots, memes and photos saved from chats.

With the Photos app

1. Open Photos › Collections › Utilities › Duplicates and merge exact duplicates.
2. Open Media Types › Screenshots, select the ones you don't need and delete them.
3. Empty Recently Deleted: deleted photos keep using space there for 30 days.

This works, but going through thousands of photos by tapping and selecting is slow.

With Photo Sensei

1. Open Photo Sensei and allow access to your photos.
2. Swipe each photo: down to mark it for deletion, left or right to keep it, up for Favorites.
3. Tap Delete now: iOS asks once for the whole batch and moves the photos to Recently Deleted.
4. When you're sure, empty Recently Deleted in the Photos app to free the space immediately.

Tip: tap the title to sort a single collection, such as Screenshots or the album your chat app saves to — that's where most of the clutter usually is.