iPhoneiOSiOS 27Photoscleanup

How to Delete All Screenshots on iPhone at Once (iOS 27)

Name: Pizazoo
Author: Pizazoo

Delete every iPhone screenshot in one pass: the Screenshots view, slide to select, Recently Deleted, what iCloud Photos changes, and the iPad differences.

October 6, 20266 min read

Muhammed BasilFounder & maker of Pizazoo

To delete all screenshots on iPhone at once, open Photos, tap Collections, then Media Types, then Screenshots. Tap Select, slide your finger across the thumbnails to select many in one motion, and tap the Delete button. Deleted screenshots wait in Recently Deleted for 30 days, and if iCloud Photos is on, they disappear from every device signed in to the same Apple Account.

The steps below follow Apple's iPhone User Guide for iOS 27 and iOS 26, with notes for iOS 18 and for iPad.

How do I delete all screenshots on iPhone at once?

Photos keeps every screenshot in its own view, so you can clear them without scrolling past your real photos.

Open the Photos app and tap Collections.
Scroll down, tap Media Types, then tap Screenshots.
Tap Select.
Slide your finger across the thumbnails to select a whole run of screenshots in one motion, or tap them one at a time.
Tap the Delete button (the trash can), then confirm.

Apple documents where screenshots live in Take a screenshot on iPhone and Locate photos and videos by media type, and the select and delete steps in Delete or hide photos and videos on iPhone. The slide gesture comes from Apple's Delete photos on your iPhone or iPad article: "tap multiple photos or slide your finger across multiple photos to select more than one."

On iOS 18, Photos has no Collections tab. Open Photos, scroll down to Media Types, tap Media Types, then tap Screenshots (Apple, iOS 18 guide). Select and Delete work the same way.

Tips for a library with thousands of screenshots

Work in batches. Select a few hundred, delete, and repeat. A stray tap then costs you one batch, not the whole selection.
Start with the oldest. In iOS 27, open the Screenshots collection, tap the Sort and Filter button, tap Sort By, then choose Oldest First (Apple). Old screenshots are usually the safest to clear.
Check for keepers first. Search Photos for things you know you will need again, such as a booking reference or an order number. Apple lists text, for example an email address or phone number, among the things Photos search can find (Apple). Leave those out of your selection, or copy them somewhere first.

What happens to screenshots after you delete them?

They are not gone right away. Photos moves them to the Recently Deleted collection, where they stay for 30 days before being permanently removed from your iPhone, iCloud and your other devices (Apple).

To recover a screenshot, or to delete screenshots for good before the 30 days are up:

In Photos, tap Collections, then tap Recently Deleted (below Utilities).
Tap View Album and unlock with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.
Tap Select and choose the items.
Tap the More button, then tap Recover or Delete.

Apple's support article also describes a Delete All option in that menu, confirmed with Delete from All Devices. Once you delete something from Recently Deleted, you can't get it back. Recently Deleted holds everything you deleted in the last 30 days, not just screenshots, so look before you empty it.

If you are deleting to free up space, delete from Recently Deleted as well instead of waiting out the 30 days. To see what is using space, Apple points to Settings, General, then iPhone Storage (Apple).

Does deleting screenshots on iPhone delete them from iCloud?

Yes, if you use iCloud Photos. Apple puts it plainly: "When you delete photos and videos on one device, they're deleted everywhere that you use iCloud Photos" (Apple). A screenshot you delete on your iPhone also disappears from Photos on your iPad and Mac, and from iCloud once it leaves Recently Deleted.

Two things follow from that:

There is no "delete from this iPhone only" for iCloud Photos items. If you want screenshots off your phone but kept somewhere, copy them out first. Apple's guide covers exporting unmodified originals to an external drive or memory card: select the items, tap Share, tap Export Unmodified Original, then choose the device (Apple).
The upside: one cleanup tidies every device, and items in iCloud Photos use your iCloud storage, so clearing them out helps there too (Apple).

How is deleting screenshots different on iPad?

The flow is the same on iPadOS 27: open Photos, go to Collections, Media Types, Screenshots, then Select and Delete (Apple, Apple). What changes:

Photos on iPad uses a sidebar for the Library and your collections (Apple).
The button for Hide (and for Recover or Delete inside Recently Deleted) is called Actions in Apple's iPad guide, where the iPhone guide says More.
An iPad signed in to the same Apple Account with iCloud Photos shares your library, so deleting screenshots on the iPad deletes them on your iPhone too.

How do I stop screenshots piling up again?

Discard throwaway screenshots at capture. In iOS 26 and iOS 27, a new screenshot opens full screen by default. Tap the Close button to cancel or delete it. To keep it, tap Done and choose an option (in iOS 27 you can also swipe up) (Apple, Apple, iOS 26). If you turned off Full-Screen Previews in Settings, General, Screen Capture, screenshots show as a thumbnail and save automatically (Apple).
Hide them if the problem is clutter, not storage. See how to remove screenshots from iPhone Photos without deleting them.
Merge exact copies. See how to find and delete duplicate screenshots on iPhone.

Can you keep a searchable copy before deleting?

Deleting is the right call for screenshots you will never need again. The harder case is the pile you might need: the receipt, the error message, the address someone sent you. If you want those out of Photos but still findable, a screenshot organizer can hold them.

We make Pizazoo, so read this section as the developer's description. Pizazoo for iPhone and iPad is free on iOS and iPadOS 17 or later. It sorts the screenshots in your photo library into categories with on-device AI and indexes the text inside each one, so you can search for them in the app, in iOS Spotlight or with Siri.

For cleanup, it has a setting called Remove from Photos after import:

Turn it on in Pizazoo's Settings. Pizazoo scans your photo library for screenshots when you open the app.
Before anything leaves Photos, a confirmation sheet asks you ("Remove N from Photos").
Removed originals go to Photos' Recently Deleted, where they stay for 30 days: the same safety net as deleting by hand.
When you save an image from another app with the share sheet (Save to Pizazoo), its Remove from Photos toggle moves the original to Recently Deleted the next time you open Pizazoo.
Inside Pizazoo, deleted screenshots go to a Trash with 30-day restore.

Two things to know. With iCloud Photos on, removing a screenshot from Photos removes it on every device, while Pizazoo's copy reaches your other devices only if you turn on iCloud Sync, part of the one-time Pro upgrade and off by default. And the copy still lives on your device, so this is about a clean camera roll and a searchable archive rather than reclaiming every megabyte.

Related guides:

Get Pizazoo for iPhone on the App Store. Free, iOS 17+, on-device.