How to delete lots of screenshots on iPhone

Find all your screenshots in one place

Screenshots end up in your photo library, and the Photos app keeps them together under Media Types. You don’t need to scroll through your whole library to find them:

1. Open the Photos app and tap Collections.
2. Scroll down to Media Types, then tap Screenshots.

Media Types holds other kinds of photos and videos too, such as Portrait mode photos and time-lapse videos, but for this job Screenshots is the only one you need.

Decide what to keep before you select anything

Most screenshots do one job and are done: a verification code, a map you checked once, a chat snippet you already sent on. Those are easy, quick calls. A few kinds are worth pulling out first, because they’re easy to lose in a mass selection:

• Receipts, order confirmations, tickets and boarding passes. You might need them for a refund or a trip.
• Addresses, phone numbers and opening hours. Often the only place you saved them.
• ID documents and QR codes you’ll be asked for again.
• Messages or posts that may disappear from the app you captured them in.

A quick way to spot these: in Collections, scroll down to Utilities. Apple’s current iPhone User Guide says the Photos app can find photos by what’s in them, such as identity documents, receipts, handwriting, illustrations and QR codes. Look through what you find there before you clear the Screenshots collection, and copy anything important into a note or a file app if you’d rather not keep the image.

One test helps with the rest: if this screenshot were gone tomorrow, would you have to retype it from memory? If yes, keep it for now.

Delete many at once: Select, then slide

Once you know what stays, deleting is quick. Apple’s steps for deleting several photos work the same inside the Screenshots collection:

1. In Screenshots, tap Select.
2. Tap the screenshots you want to delete, or slide your finger across several to select them in one go.
3. Tap the Trash button, then confirm to delete them.

Sliding your finger selects a long run in seconds, which is exactly why it’s easy to grab one you meant to keep. Before you tap Trash, scroll back through the selection once.

Work through the backlog in chunks, say a month or a few hundred at a time, rather than one enormous selection. If something goes wrong, a small chunk is easier to check in Recently Deleted.

Deleted one you needed?

You have 30 days. Open Photos, swipe up and tap Recently Deleted in the Utilities section, then tap View Album and unlock it with Face ID or Touch ID. Tap the screenshot, then tap Recover. To bring back several, tap Select, choose them, then tap the More button › Recover and confirm. Recovered items go back to your library.

Where SnapTidy helps

Multi-select in Photos works well for screenshots you’ve already decided about. It’s less helpful for the ones you’d like to look at one by one, which is where SnapTidy fits.

Stop the pile from building up again

The easiest screenshot to clean up is the one you deal with right away.

• Delete it right after you take it. When a thumbnail appears in the lower-left corner after a screenshot, tap it: from there you can crop it, mark it up or delete it straight away.
• Check your capture setting. Apple lets you choose whether screenshots appear full screen or as a temporary thumbnail. With full-screen screenshots, you choose whether to save each one; screenshots shown as thumbnails are saved automatically.
• Pick a regular slot. A short look at Screenshots once a week, or on the first of the month, keeps the collection small enough to judge in a minute.

In short

• Photos › Collections › Media Types › Screenshots shows all your screenshots in one place.
• Pull out receipts, tickets, addresses, IDs and QR codes before you select.
• Tap Select, slide your finger to select many, check the selection, then tap Trash.
• Deleted screenshots wait in Recently Deleted for 30 days; with iCloud Photos, deleting applies to every device.

Sources

1. iPhone User Guide: Take a screenshot on iPhone · accessed Oct 25, 2026
2. iPhone User Guide: Locate photos and videos by media type · accessed Oct 25, 2026
3. iPhone User Guide: Find receipts, QR codes, recently edited photos, and more · accessed Oct 25, 2026
4. Apple Support: Delete photos on your iPhone or iPad (104967) · accessed Oct 25, 2026
5. Apple Support: How to recover deleted photos (124460) · accessed Oct 25, 2026