Which photos should you delete first on iPhone?

How do I judge a photo in two seconds?

Ask one question: would I be sorry not to have this in five years? If yes, keep it. If you are unsure, ask a second one: is there another photo that does this job better? A retake, a sharper frame or a wider angle usually answers it. If a better one exists, let this one go.

Do not ask whether the photo is good. Plenty of keepers are technically poor, such as a blurry candid of someone who is no longer around. Judge by meaning first and quality second.

What are the safe deletes?

• Screenshots of finished tasks: directions, error messages, chats.
• Photos of a parked car, a shelf or a menu that you took to remember something that has passed.
• Test shots taken to check the light or focus.
• Frames from a burst except the best one.
• Videos that are mostly floor, a pocket or a ceiling.
• Forwarded images and memes from group chats.

What should I keep even if it looks like junk?

Some clutter is evidence. Photos of receipts for warranty claims, of a serial number, of a prescription or a parking ticket have a deadline, not an owner. Keep them until the deadline passes, then delete. A photo of an old address, a home layout before a repair, or a car's damage before a trade-in can also matter later.

How do I decide among near-identical photos?

1. Open them next to each other and zoom on the faces.
2. Check that eyes are open and nobody is blinking or mid-word.
3. Check focus on the main subject.
4. Pick one, tap the heart on it, and let the rest go.
5. If two are equally good, keep the one with better light.

Can an app help me sort in this order?

It can, if it respects your judgment. Rollmark, an iPhone app in development, mirrors this order with its piles. Screenshots and On this day are free. Seconds apart groups photos taken within 3 seconds of each other in the same orientation, and Large videos lists videos estimated at 50 MB or more, biggest first. Those two are part of Pro. All decisions are yours, and nothing leaves your library until you confirm in the iOS dialog. The sort piles page has details.

What about the photos I cannot decide on?

Set a rule for the maybe pile. Anything you cannot decide on within five seconds is kept this time. You can revisit that material in the next monthly pass, when it is a month older and its meaning is clearer. Indecision is a signal that the photo has some value. The cost of keeping it is a few megabytes, and the cost of regret is not.

How do I stop the pile from coming back?

Sort a little each week. The guide on stopping your camera roll from filling up covers habits that make the first cleanup the last big one.

A worked example with invented numbers

Take a library of 6,000 items: 900 screenshots, 120 videos, 200 burst frames, 80 exact duplicates and the rest everyday photos. Deleting 700 of the screenshots takes ten minutes and trims clutter. Dropping 30 long videos frees the most space, perhaps 15 GB in this example. Burst frames reduce 200 to 40. Merged duplicates remove 80. After one evening you have gone from 6,000 to about 5,000 items, and the hard part has not started.

What about photos of children and family?

These get more care, not less. Keep more than you think you need, since children change quickly and the photos grow in value. Even so, thin the near-copies. A dozen photos of a birthday cake tell the story as well as eighty. Choose one that holds the whole month and mark it, so the year can be seen in twelve pictures.

How long should the first pass take?

Plan for three short sessions of twenty minutes rather than one long evening. Fatigue makes decisions worse after about half an hour. Stop at the end of a group, write down where you finished, and start the next group fresh. The target of the first pass is to clear the easy groups, not to finish.

What about photos other people sent me?

Treat them as lower priority than your own shots, and delete the ones that do not matter once the moment is over. A forwarded joke, a chat photo of a menu, a group picture where you appear as a face in the back row. Photos where you are in the frame, or that mark a person or a day you care about, move into the keep pile and may deserve a heart.

Should I clean photos or videos first?

Videos first if space is the problem, photos first if clutter is. A handful of long videos can free more than a thousand photos, but they take longer to judge. If your goal is a roll you enjoy opening, start with photos and screenshots, and leave the videos for a night when you need space.