How To Properly Delete Photos To Clear Space On Your iPhone

Running out of space on your iPhone is a common problem - especially if you only have 16GB or 32GB of storage to begin with.

When this happens, most people go into their Photos app and start deleting any pictures that aren't worth keeping.

But while removing photos from your iPhone can help to free up space, deleting them from your Camera Roll doesn't actually achieve this.

"Deleting" photos simply moves them into your Recently Deleted folder, where they remain for 29 days before being permanently deleted.

While this is a useful feature if you've deleted a picture by accident, it doesn't help if you're trying to free up space, as the photos take up the same amount of storage in the Recently Deleted folder as they did in your Camera Roll.

However, there is an extra step you can take to remove the photos from your iPhone completely.

All you need to do is tap on the "Albums" tab in the navigation bar at the bottom of the Photos app, and scroll down until you find the "Recently Deleted" folder.

Open up the album and you will see all the photos you have deleted in the last 29 days. Then tap "Select" in the top right corner, and "Delete All" in the bottom left corner.

Incidentally, each 12MP photo captured using an iPhone 6s or iPhone 7 take up around 3-4 MB a pop, so you should be able to free up storage quite quickly in this way.

If you want to free up space on your phone without deleting photos, you can also move them to the iCloud.