How do I remove ALL PHOTOS from iPhone?

Question

I have 26K photos on a 64GB iPhone 7 and running iOS 12.4

How can I delete all photos en-masse? That is, removing all photos from the iPhone's Camera Roll.

Answer 1

Your question doesn't full specify what you're wanting or what you've already tried, so I'm assuming you want to do this directly from your iPhone (as opposed to doing it while your iPhone is connected to a Mac/PC).

I'm also assuming you're just wanting to free up space and you've already backed up your photos. If so, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone
2. Tap on the Albums icon down the bottom
3. Tap on the Camera Roll album at top left
4. Tap on Select at top right (the word Select will change to Cancel)
5. Tap on the status bar at top of the screen (this will take you to the oldest photos in your Camera Roll
6. Now tap on the first photo (at top left) without taking your finger off the screen and while keeping your finger down gently swipe across the screen and then swipe down continuously - this will select all photos up to the point at which you take your finger off the screen
7. Tap on the Trash can icon at bottom right to delete all selected photos

NOTE: If you're doing this to free up space, then you will also need to remove your deleted photos from the Recently Deleted album (as photos are stored there for 30 days before actually being removed from your device). You can select the Recently Deleted album from the very bottom of the Albums screen in order to remove them from there and free up space.

Answer 2

One way to do it on a Mac.

• Connect iPhone, quit Photos if it auto-launches.

• Launch Image Capture [in Applications]

• Select your phone on the left.

• In the list on the right, select the first picture, scroll right down & shift/select the last picture.

• Click the delete icon & confirm.

Answer 3

But if you have a Mac available and prefer to do it there: turn on iCloud photos on both, put the iPhone and Mac online, open Photos on the app.

Wait ages and ages for the Mac to show all the photos (phone uploads to iCloud, then Photos app downloads). Might not be as long if both were already enabled.

Select all the photos on the Mac with Cmd-A, press delete, answer the pop ups appropriately, go to recently deleted and repeat.

Answer 4

Ich bin dummkopf! “Settings->general->reset->erase contents and settings” did the trick. I just realized that I did not phrase my question right. I wanted to erase everything on the iPhone. Thank you very much for trying to help me. You are the best!