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How to delete photo folders on iPad?

I just realized that there are over 400 folders created automatically on my iPad, starting from 100Apple to 413Apple, It's pain to go into each ... How to delte them and proven this from happening again?

Thank you in advance.

Happy holidays.

Irene

iPad, iOS 9.2

Posted on Dec 19, 2015 2:13 PM

Reply
13 replies

Dec 21, 2015 5:55 AM in response to Irene Eng

Make sure you have copied off every image/video that you want to keep. The following steps should then clear things up:


  1. Backup device.
  2. Restore as a new device.
  3. Restore the backup you made earlier.


N.B. A feature introduced with iOS 9 referred to as app thinning or app slicing allows each device to download only the code and resources needed by that device, resulting in smaller downloads and better use of storage on the device. As a consequence the device no longer holds the universal version of the app that could be installed on any device so transferring apps is no longer supported. Hopefully Apple will make some changes to the way this works, but in the meantime you can download past purchases from iTunes and/or enable automatic downloads of app purchases to make sure that iTunes always has the apps that you want on your device. As long as you make sure all apps are present and updated in iTunes before attempting a restore there should be no loss of data. I can't confirm, but it seems a recent update means that all data is restored and apps that are not in the library are queued for download from the iTunes Store over Wi-Fi, in a similar fashion to the way restore from iCloud works.


tt2

Dec 20, 2015 8:06 AM in response to Irene Eng

Those are the folders in which your photos are organized on the device. My iPhone shows 52 folders at the moment. I've no idea why they're not presented in a way which makes it easier to see new images that have been added to the camera roll so that these can be copied off, or reflects the arrangement of folders that have been copied in from a computer, but that is the way Apple have chosen to do it. I'd be wary of deleting content via Explorer as you may break albums or photo/video projects that are on the device. You should however copy off any new camera roll items that aren't copied to your computer automatically if using Photo Stream (typically longer video files you might have taken). You can delete these if you no longer want them on the device, but it might be best to tidy up on the device itself.


One way to check for new items is to select the DCIM folder and then enter *.* in the search box at the top right of the Explorer window. This will show all items in all folders. You can sort on Date modified to order the results.


User uploaded file


tt2

Dec 19, 2015 8:11 PM in response to Irene Eng

How/where are you seeing these folders?


It's not a best practice to manually manipulate anything inside your iOS device. You can certainly copy data from a folder, but I would not delete or move anything you find. Apple prefers to make their interfaces extremely user-friendly and that means respecting their file organization structure(s).


Having said that, those sound like photo folders. I'd leave them as is.

Dec 21, 2015 5:39 AM in response to bobseufert

I've 2,483 photos and 4 videos on iPad at this writing. Most of them needed to be deleted. Many folders contain just one picture. I dont see any of these folders on the iPad - only on my laptop. All these 400+ folders are created, probably by Apple. I didn't. It's a terrible situation. Time consuming.


I used to be able to delete all photos on iPad, after connecting to a laptop. But now I can't. Keep getting the message saying I don't have permission to delete.


Hope this helps. Thank you all for helping.


IRene (as I'm tying This message, the capitalization function seems acting up too .... IR and This...)

How to delete photo folders on iPad?

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