Photo bloat is real, people. Most of us forget about all of our selfies, food shots, and random photos shortly after we post them to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, et al. But your phone doesn’t. The files sit in the camera roll in your Photos app, taking up valuable storage space that you could be filling with apps, podcasts, or if you’re like me, a giant backlog of email. Eventually, things may get so bad that you’re scrolling through Photos and deleting a few pictures every time you need space.
To make the process more streamlined (and encourage all of us to do a better job of clearing our own photographic clutter), one of our fellow iOS users has created an iOS 12 shortcut that will empty your camera roll in one fell swoop. In this case, to “empty” means that it deletes all of the photos and videos stored in the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad, as well as in iCloud.
Using the shortcut is incredibly easy. Once you’ve downloaded it, tap the shortcut in your library, which will trigger a confirmation prompt letting you know how many photos you’re clearing out. Tap “delete,” and they’re gone! It’s very simple, which is great, but it also means you should be very careful with it. This deletes everything in your camera roll, so make sure you’ve backed up any files with sentimental value on your laptop or in a third-party cloud storage app, such as dropbox, before using it.
We’ve been trading scripts since the Apple launched the Shortcuts app with iOS 12 last month: This one popped up in response to a request on Reddit, and it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re in the mood to do some spring fall cleaning on your phone.
Untitled Shortcut 7 [Apple]
Updated on October 17, 2018, at 1:58pm EST: We’ve clarified that the shortcut deletes your backups of your device’s photos in iCloud, in addition to your camera roll.