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How to delete Photo Library from iPhone

In trying to put a few photos onto my husband's 3GS iPhone from my MacBook Pro, somehow I managed to put part of my Photo Library onto his phone and now I cannot delete it. I can't even delete the photos one by one. How can I delete the entire Photo Library off of his phone????

iPhone 3GS (8GB), iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Jun 6, 2012 9:02 PM

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Posted on Jun 6, 2012 9:07 PM

Photo library photos, which are synced from your computer to your phone, must be removed by connecting your phone to iTunes, then going to the Photos tab of your iTunes sync settings, deselecting the folders you no longer want (or deselecting Sync Photos if you want to remove them all), then syncing your phone.

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Jun 6, 2012 9:07 PM in response to davacoco

Photo library photos, which are synced from your computer to your phone, must be removed by connecting your phone to iTunes, then going to the Photos tab of your iTunes sync settings, deselecting the folders you no longer want (or deselecting Sync Photos if you want to remove them all), then syncing your phone.

Jun 7, 2012 11:33 AM in response to davacoco

Sorry Folks, your suggestions/advise is not working. The Photo Library does not come up in my iTunes/Photo tab. It only allows me to "Sync photos". As advised above, I also tried to delete an album by deselcting it and hitting apply and lo and behold..the album is still on my iPhone in my Camera Roll as well as Photo Stream. I can manually delete photos one by one in my Camera Roll and Photo Stream, however, I cannot delete any in my Photo Library. Now either I'm an idiot or something's up with my system.And please don't tell me I'm an idiot because I am not making up this frustrating pain the ___, so unless I'm missing something very basic... Please help!

Jun 7, 2012 11:39 AM in response to davacoco

Deselecting a folder and syncing does not delete an album created from camera roll (which are photos taken by your phone), it only deletes albums synced to your phone from your computer and contained in photo library. To delete an album created on your phone from camera roll, go to the Albums view, tap Edit at the top, then tap ➖ next to the album you want to delete.


Just to clarify again, camera roll photos are taken by your phone and albums containing these photos can be deleted on you phone as explained above. Photos in photo library are synced to your phone from your computer and are deleted by deselecting the photos on the Photos tab of your iTunes sync settings and syncing your phone.

Jul 9, 2012 11:04 AM in response to davacoco

I had this exact issue just now. I researched and compiled all of the answers. Surprisingly it worked.

1) On my PC desktop, I right clicked and created a new folder. I named it "Empty folder".

2) I plugged in my phone to computer, opened iTunes.

3) Clicked on my phone on the left

4) Clicked on "photos" on the top

5) Clicked the box "Sync Photos with"

6) Choose the dropdown and "choose folder"

7) Click "desktop" option

8) Click on the folder that you created and named whatever you named it.

9) Click "apply/sync"


In doing so, it deleted the "Photo Library" with the little sunflower as well as a "My Photos" album it had also created, but it left all of my other photos that I wanted to keep.

I'm shocked that this actually worked.

Hope this helps you.

How to delete Photo Library from iPhone

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