How to delete screenshots on iPhone

Including how to delete them all at once — and the step that actually frees the storage

Screenshots pile up faster than any other kind of photo. A few hundred of them can quietly eat a couple of gigabytes, and they clutter every scroll through your camera roll. Here is how to clear them properly.

Delete screenshots one at a time

1. Open Photos.
2. Tap Albums at the bottom.
3. Scroll down to Media Types and tap Screenshots. iOS builds this album for you automatically.
4. Tap Select in the top right.
5. Tap each screenshot you want gone — or press and drag across several to select a run of them quickly.
6. Tap the trash icon, then confirm.

Delete all screenshots at once

Same album, one shortcut:

1. Photos → Albums → Media Types → Screenshots
2. Tap Select, then Select All in the top left.
3. Tap the trash icon and confirm.

If Select All doesn't appear, you're looking at your main library rather than the Screenshots album — back out to Albums and go in through Media Types.

The step most guides miss: empty Recently Deleted

This is the reason people delete hundreds of screenshots and watch their free space refuse to budge. Deleted photos are not gone — they sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days, still occupying storage.

1. Photos → Albums → Utilities → Recently Deleted
2. Unlock with Face ID or Touch ID if prompted.
3. Tap Select, then Delete All.

Now the space is genuinely back. You can confirm in Settings → General → iPhone Storage → Photos.

Clear the camera roll without losing anything

There's a third option, and for most people it's the one they actually wanted. The reason "delete all" feels drastic is that somewhere in those hundreds are the Wi-Fi password from the rental, the recipe you meant to cook, the confirmation number, the gift idea. Wiping the album fixes the clutter and takes those with it.

ScreenStash separates the two problems. It imports every screenshot into its own library first, then offers to delete the originals from Photos — all of them, in one pass — so your camera roll ends up genuinely empty. Nothing is lost, because everything is already safe inside the app, searchable by the text inside each image.

1. Install ScreenStash and import your screenshots.
2. When the import finishes, accept the offer to clean up Photos. iOS shows its own confirmation dialog — ScreenStash never deletes silently, and only proposes deleting files it has already verified.
3. Empty Recently Deleted as described above to reclaim the storage.

Same clean camera roll as deleting everything by hand. None of the regret.

• Search inside your screenshots — type "wifi" and find the password you saved eight months ago
• Smart boards group receipts, recipes, travel and codes automatically
• Camera roll cleanup reclaims the storage you were trying to free in the first place
• Nothing leaves your device — text recognition runs entirely on your iPhone

Download on theApp Store

Free for your newest 500 screenshots · Pro is $19.99 once — not a subscription

Common questions

Why is my storage still full after deleting screenshots?

They're still in Recently Deleted, which holds them for 30 days. Empty it using the steps above and the space returns immediately.

Can I stop screenshots cluttering my camera roll in the first place?

iOS has no setting to save screenshots somewhere separate — they always land in Photos. The practical fix is to move them out regularly rather than prevent them arriving.

Do deleted screenshots disappear from iCloud too?

Yes. If iCloud Photos is on, deleting on one device removes them everywhere once the change syncs. Recently Deleted syncs too, so emptying it on your iPhone empties it across your devices.

How much space do screenshots actually use?

A single iPhone screenshot is usually 1–3 MB. Five hundred of them is roughly a gigabyte — enough to matter on a 64 GB phone, and enough to notice on any of them.

Using an Android phone? Here's the same guide for Android →