how to delete all photos on iphone 4
how do delete all photos on iphone 4 after you have imported them to iphoto and decide you do not want to keep them all?
iPhone 4, iOS 5.0.1
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)
- Plug phone into the Mac
- Disconnect (eject) the iPhone from the device list in iPhoto
- Open up Image Capture (A default application on the Mac, located in the Applications folder)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.
