Screenshots are the easiest photos anyone will ever delete. They are useful for a day and clutter for a decade, nobody feels sentimental about a screenshot of a parking meter, and iOS has already collected them into an album for you.
This is the fastest way to clear them, and the reason it is worth doing even though the space involved is modest.
The two-minute version
Open the album
Photos → Albums tab → scroll to Media Types → Screenshots. iOS files them here automatically.
Tap Select, then drag rather than tap
This is the part people miss. With Select active, press on one thumbnail and drag your finger across the grid — the selection follows your finger. Drag sideways across a row, then down, and you can select several hundred in a few seconds. Tapping one at a time is what makes this feel like an hour's job.
Scroll while selecting, if you want everything
Keep your finger down and move to the edge of the screen to keep the grid scrolling while it selects. Alternatively, select in screen-sized batches and delete each one — less impressive, less error-prone.
Delete, then empty Recently Deleted
Albums → Recently Deleted → Select → Delete All. Until this step, every screenshot you just deleted is still occupying storage.
Keep the handful that matter
Before you clear the lot, it is worth a fast scroll for the small number of screenshots that are genuinely documents:
- Booking confirmations and tickets for trips that have not happened yet
- Two-factor recovery codes
- Receipts you might need for a return or an expense claim
- A Wi-Fi password for somewhere you go back to
- Anything from a conversation you may need to refer to again
Everything else — memes, articles you meant to read, a map of a route you have already walked, screenshots of screenshots — goes.
Why bother, if it is only a gigabyte?
Two honest reasons, neither of them mainly about space.
Momentum. A cleanup that starts with a decision you are 100% sure about is a cleanup that gets finished. Screenshots are the easiest deletions in your library, and clearing 900 of them in two minutes makes the harder piles feel possible.
Search and memories get better. Screenshots dilute everything the Photos app tries to do with your library — the For You suggestions, the Memories videos, the results when you search for a person or a place. Removing them measurably improves what the app shows you.
If you need actual gigabytes, the honest answer is videos, and it is covered in what is actually taking up space on your iPhone.
Stopping it happening again
The album refills at whatever rate you take screenshots, which for most people is a few a day.
- Delete it when you are done with it. The moment you have used the screenshot for the thing you took it for, swipe it away. This is the only habit that works long term.
- Use Share instead where you can. Sharing a link, a location or a contact rather than a picture of one leaves nothing in the camera roll.
- Do a two-minute pass monthly. The album is always there, it is always sorted, and a month of screenshots takes 90 seconds to clear.
Doing it as part of a bigger clean
If you are working through the whole library rather than just this album, screenshots are one pile among several, and doing them in a card deck rather than a selection grid is quicker — each one is a yes-or-no you can answer in half a second without opening it.
That is one of the piles in our own app, SwipeDrop, alongside duplicates, similar shots, blurry shots, large files and videos. Screenshots are usually the pile people finish first, which is exactly why it is a good place to start.
Frequently asked
- Can I delete all screenshots at once on iPhone?
- There is no single Delete All button for the album, but there is a fast way to get close. Tap Select, then press and drag across the thumbnails — the selection follows your finger, so a few swipes select hundreds. Combine it with scrolling and the whole album takes a couple of minutes.
- Do screenshots take up much space?
- Individually, no — usually a few hundred kilobytes to a couple of megabytes each. A thousand of them is somewhere around one gigabyte. That is not nothing, but if you have a genuine storage emergency the space is in your videos, not here.
- Where is the Screenshots album on iPhone?
- Photos, Albums tab, scroll down to Media Types, then Screenshots. It is populated automatically by iOS — you do not have to do anything to maintain it.
- Will deleting screenshots delete them from iCloud?
- Yes, if iCloud Photos is on. They land in Recently Deleted for 30 days first, on every device, and clearing that album releases the space in iCloud as well as on the phone.