How to quickly delete photos and videos to free up storage on your iPhone or iPad

May 16, 2014

It's all too easy for the Camera Roll on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to grow out of control. The list grows incredibly, uselessly long and photos and videos end up eating up a ton of your storage space. If you have only 8GB or 16GB, or even 32GB there can come a time when you have to delete the old photos and videos on your iPhone or iPad in order to free up space for the new ones. You might even have to do it regularly! Luckily, Apple makes it fairly easy to delete large batches of photos or videos and reclaim your storage space!

Note: Make sure you sync or upload any important photos or videos before deleting them!

How to delete batches of photos and videos on your iPhone or iPad

Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
Tap on the Photos tab along the bottom.
The Photos tab lets you go from the top category of Years to Collections and finally to Moments. You want to be in the Moments section so drill down if you need to until you see Moments at the top.
Tap on Select in the top right.
Tap on Select next to a set of photos instead of a single photo.
Tap on the Trash Can in the bottom right.
Confirm you'd like to delete the photos.

While it isn't a perfect solution, it's much faster than individually tapping individual photos in the Camera Roll. Until Apple gives us a way to mass delete all photos, it's what we've got. The next time you've got large amounts of photos to delete, give this method a try and tell me how it works for you!