Deleting all photos in photos app

[Howard Brazee]

I want to delete all of my photos in my iPad and iPhone, then reload them all from my Mac's Photos app via iTunes.

I downloaded a bunch of apps (and even paid for one) - which don't seem to be able to see any of my photos. If I *take* a photo, the apps can see it, but they don't see apps that have been loaded in the past from my Mac's Photos app via iTunes.

I can't delete and re-install the photos app. I've got thousands and thousands of photos, and there is no provision in the photos app on my iDevices to delete large numbers of photos.

I have the iCloud Photo Library turned off, My Photo Stream on, Upload Burst Photos off, iCloud Photo Sharing on, Summarize Photos on.

 

[rpphoto]

Have you tried Google Photos for iOS, Dropbox, or the Documents app? Google will automatically save all your photos to Google Drive, part of a free Google Mail account, you can download the Dropbox iOS app and save them to a free online account. Documents for iOS is a fantastic app for moving your files to any cloud service or other devices. I think you can even login to your computer as a service. Those are the apps I use on my iPad Pro to shuffle photos around. After you upload to Google, there s an option to remove them for your device, yet they will still be safely stored in the Google Cloud. Google even offers unlimited free storage if you choose the "high quality" rather than the "original" file option. The Google Photos app has been updated with some astonishing and fun options, too. If you try the Google Photos app, you might want to download the free Google Dive iOS app, too.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I don't want to store my photos on the web. I only want them on my devices.

I'm testing out a solution I found though. In iTunes, instead of synchronizing with Photos, synchronize with a directory with only one photo in it. Then on my iDevice, delete that one photo. Then I can synchronize with Photos should I desire.

 

[billiehawkins]

The issue your talking about is this: the apps on your phone usually can only talk to the 'camera roll' on the device. The photos you have on your phone now are not in the 'camera roll' - they are in a different storage area. This is why you can not delete them from the device. They are considered 'managed' by iTunes Sync, and not the device itself.

That said, there is a way. On your computer, plug in the phone, and download any app that can 'browse the iphone file system' - an example is https://www.ibrowseapp.com/

Basically, when you run this, it will let you see, and copy, the photos from your phone. Once you have them copied, you can turn on Photo SYNC in itunes (in the photos tab of itunes for the phone) to delete the files on the phone, and re-sync them with the folder or MacOS photos App.

 

[Howard Brazee]

That looks very good - but $40 is a lot for something I will use once to save me a few hours of work.

 

[billiehawkins]

There are free versions, I am simply illustrating the process by which the problem can be solved.

Another option: if you use airdrop, you can 'send' a bunch of photos back to your computer, from the wifi, and then repeat the process until all photos are copied over.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I have all of my pictures on my Mac's Photos app. I'm trying to delete all of the photos on my iPad. Yesterday, I was able to delete them all from my iPhone by synchronizing my iPhone (via iTunes) to a file, then deleting that file by hand. Then I synchronized the whole Photos library to my phone, and no longer have duplicates there. Today I tried doing the same thing with my iPad, but for some reason it didn't work. iTunes thinks my iPad has 25 photos on it, but my iPad has thousands of photos on it. Going into my iPhone and my iPad, I can select photos - but I the trash can is gray when I do so.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Right now my iPad has 17,846 photos. iTunes syncs only 4 photos from Dropbox. If I select photos on my iPad, the trash can is greyed out. ImageCapture does not see any photos on my iPad.

 

[paul martin]

Do you have any idea how to delete the "hidden photos" from the People file. (That's all I wan to delete and the guys at Apple are stumped so they turned it over to the engineers about four months ago but have yet to hear fro them.