how to delete all photos on iphone 4

The OP asked about photos imported from the iPhone into iPhoto on a Mac. He IS asking about the photos in the Camera Roll. The photos in the Camera Roll are the only photos that iPhoto can import off of an iPhone.

If you are going to pick a fight about a question & answer raised two months ago, you should actually know what you are talking about!

Very clever and useful solution tandoantd. Disregard the silly posts here comparing this super-easy solution to methods that do not work.

And, for those that are saying Apple did not put a Select All and Delete option because people may accidentally delete their Photos and whine, then why does Apple have the same option available for Messages and Mail? Whatever. Apple has gotten more and more inconsistent in interface design in recent years, especially within MacOS.

See how ugly and un-Mac-like AddressBook is (and how it requires multiicple clicks to make an edit and drag a contact card into a particular group instead of doing it all from one window with multiple panes), how clicking on iTunes' green window maximize button is actually a minimize button, how you can use key-presses to see which Groups a Contact is in, in AddressBook, but similar consistent ability to see what Albums a Photo may be in iPhoto, does not exist, etc.

Thank you for the tip. It saved me having to click 350 photos to delete them.

Regards

Imran Anwar

This is super easy on your mac...

Launch "Image Capture" (included with OSX) and if the iphone is not connect it, connet it first and select it from the left navigation bar in image calture. Select images you want ot delete (or apple A for all) then press the little circle with a cross through it on the boom of the window to delete.

Super easy and fast.

Hope this helps.

I agree - Preview delete was way easier than the rest.

I was done before I read the rest of the replies

Why doesn't anyone state the obvious...

1. Plug in iPhone

2. Go to iPhoto

3. Click on iPhone on device list

4. Click Remove Photos from iPhone on right under the pictures

Done.

Because there have been a few updates to iPhoto since this was posted 6 months ago and that wasn't an option then.

Are you going to go to all of the old threads and post answers that are available today that weren't when the issue was first posted?

Good point.

Genius...so easy!!😉

In case anyone else comes across this, the symbol is the red circle with a red diagonal diameter line in it. It's the button just to the left of the word Import To.

What's good about this solution is that it lets you delete the photos days, weeks, months after you've already imported them into iPhoto.

Most of the other methods mentioned here work only if you're doing a fresh import of all the photos on the iPhone. They work only after you've imported photos.

So, they're not a solution to the problem of Select All, Delete All.

Now, I came to this thread for another reason... trying to get of the space taken up on the iPhone that shows as "Other" (yellow bar) in iTunes.

Unfortunately, this didn't do it!

Agreed. Having the option to delete all or select all, then delete is missing critical functionality.

Nice job - you get 5 Stars. Tandoantd. All other answers sucked. Great job.

By doing this, can I then keep my photoes in Photostream? That would avoid the fact that i have a double of every picture ever taken with my iPhone.

tandoantd - easy solution- thanks

The easiest way on a Mac is to open Image Capture. It comes as pre-installed software on all Macs. There you will see the photos in your camera roll. Just select them and click on the delete button (red crossed circle below). That will actually delete de photos from the iphone's memory.

I keep my iPhoto Library on an external hard drive and have upgraded it since 2004 (version after version), and I've had 3 versions of the iPhone, and probably 8 or 9 actual phones through warranty swaps and/or upgrades. I've restored each phone from a previous backup in iTunes, and while I'm not sure this chain of restoration (of iPhone backups, and iPhoto Libraries) has caused a particular corruption, I recently ran into an issue where I simply couldn't delete photos through iPhoto, or iTunes on my iPhone 4s. Not being able to delete photos caused the memory to be full on my phone, and I was forced to find a solution.

I wasn't able to get anywhere with the normal operation solutions. (You know, the stuff that's just supposed to work.)

• Importing all photos into iPhoto and deleting after import appeared as it was working normally, but all photos remained on phone.
• I tried syncing with an empty folder as mentioned here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2701155?answerId=17641663022#17641663022 - The syncing process in iTunes appeared as though it was working perfectly, and it would actually add new photos, but all photos still remained on the phone that were in photo albums unchecked in iTunes.

The only way I was able to delete all of the photos in the Camera Roll on the Phone: (on a Mac)

1. Plug phone into the Mac
2. Disconnect (eject) the iPhone from the device list in iPhoto
3. Open up Image Capture (A default application on the Mac, located in the Applications folder)
4. Select the iPhone from the list of connected devices, ⌘ + a (select all) then select the ⃠ symbol (do not enter, or "no" symbol that is at the bottom left)
5. You will see a dialog that says "deleting" and then a progress bar. If you don't see the progress bar, and only the words "deleting," (And then the iPhone just "disconnects" from Image Capture) you probably have a corrupt photo or video file.
6. If select all does not work - see below.

I actually had to select the photos in groups, because it was a "needle in a haystack" issue. I held down the "shift" key and selected multiple photos from the newest (bottom of the list) up, then hit the delete button in Image Capture. I started with about 400 photos at a time. I waited for the progress bar to finish, and then went on to the next batch. (You can actually open up the Photos app on the iPhone, and go into album labeled "Camera Roll" and watch the photos go away.) When I selected a batch that caused the "delete" dialog with no progress bar (and then the automatic disconnection), I reduced the number of selections until I found the file that was causing the program to quit. On my phone it was a video file. Unfortunately it was an older file too, so it was near the top of the list from where I started my batch selections.

I then deleted this file manually on the phone. I was then able to select the remaining files and clear out the phone. I'm not going to say this all wasn't a pain in the ***, because it was. But, it was the only solution I found to work.