How do I delete thousands of old screenshots at once?

If you have thousands of old screenshots cluttering your iPhone, here's the fastest bulk-delete method as of 2026 (iOS 17 and later).

Method 1: Bulk delete from the Screenshots album

• Open Photos → Albums tab.
• Scroll down to "Media Types" → tap Screenshots.
• Tap Select in the top-right corner.
• Tap the *first* screenshot you want to delete.
• Drag your finger across multiple thumbnails — this is the fastest way to select hundreds at once. You can drag down a whole column, or in a sweeping pattern across rows.
• Tap the trash icon → Delete X Screenshots.

iOS will move them to Recently Deleted, where they stay for 30 days. To permanently free up storage immediately, go to Albums → Recently Deleted → Select All → Delete.

Method 2: Delete by date range (more selective)

• In Photos, tap the Library tab.
• Tap All Photos at the bottom.
• Pinch-zoom out until you see the year/month grouping.
• Tap a month or year header to jump.
• Use Select + drag to grab all screenshots from a given time period.

Method 3: Use a smart app

Apps like Némos (and a few others) build an index of your screenshots and let you bulk-delete based on rules — "delete every screenshot older than 90 days that I've never tagged," for example. Némos does this on-device, so your screenshots never go to a server.

One warning: before deleting in bulk, run Apple's Live Text search for keywords like "confirmation," "receipt," "ticket," "address," "password." It takes 60 seconds and catches the ones you'd actually regret losing.

The average user we surveyed in 2026 reclaimed 3.2 GB of storage doing a single bulk-delete pass.