RydopHow to clean up photos on iPhone
Start where you gain the most for the least effort. In Photos, tap Collections: merge everything under Utilities › Duplicates, delete old screenshots under Media Types › Screenshots, and go through Media Types › Videos, because videos take the most space. Then go through the rest one month at a time. Finish by emptying Recently Deleted, or the space stays taken for 30 days.
1. Merge duplicates
Open Photos, tap Collections, scroll to Utilities and tap Duplicates. Tap Select, then Select All and Merge. Photos keeps the best copy of each photo. The details, and what to do if the album is missing, are in how to delete duplicate photos on iPhone.
2. Delete old screenshots
- In Photos, tap Collections, scroll to Media Types and tap Screenshots. On iOS 26 it’s also among the pinned collections at the top.
- Tap Select, then drag your finger across the thumbnails to select many at once.
- Tap the Delete button (the trash can) and confirm.
Where things are follows Apple’s guide Find your Favorites and albums in Photos on your iPhone or iPad. Screenshots of tickets, receipts or codes you still need: mark them as favorites first, so they’re easy to leave out.
3. Go through the big videos
Under Media Types, tap Videos. Photos doesn’t sort by size, but length is a good guide: a long 4K video can take several gigabytes. Settings › Camera › Record Video shows how much a minute takes at each quality.
Delete what you won’t watch again. To keep only the best part, tap Edit, drag the ends of the timeline, tap Done and choose Save Video as New Clip, then delete the original. Saving over the original doesn’t free space, because Photos keeps the full video so you can undo the trim.
4. Trim bursts and series
A burst is saved as one stack. Open it (Media Types › Bursts), tap Select, tick the frames you want to keep, tap Done and choose Keep Only [number] Favorites. The rest go to Recently Deleted.
Series you shot one photo at a time, like ten pictures of the same view, aren’t a burst, and Photos has no tool for them. Go through them by hand, one month at a time. It goes faster if you only decide keep or delete for each photo, and leave albums and favorites for later.
5. Empty Recently Deleted
Everything you delete waits 30 days in Recently Deleted and still takes up space. Under Collections › Utilities, tap Recently Deleted, unlock it with Face ID, tap Select, then the More button and Delete All. After that, the photos can’t be recovered. With iCloud Photos, deleting applies to all your devices.
Faster with Rydop
Rydop does steps 1 to 4 on your iPhone and shows how much space each one frees:
- Similar photos: shots taken seconds or minutes apart are grouped, and the sharpest, best-lit one is marked to keep.
- Duplicates, screenshots (oldest first), large videos (biggest first, with sizes) and blurry photos, each in its own list.
- Swipe through the camera roll a month at a time: left to delete, right to keep, with undo. Rydop remembers where you were.
- Favorites and edited photos are never picked for you, and nothing is deleted until you tap Delete and iOS asks you to confirm.
Rydop costs $1.99 once, with no ads and no subscription. It has no account, uploads nothing, and its App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”. Is the whole iPhone full, not just Photos? See how to free up space on iPhone.