How do I delete screenshots from iPhone and iCloud?

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Level 1

72 points

How do I delete screenshots from iPhone and iCloud?

I hope some kind soul can explain the latest state of the Photos app on iPhone and the way it is linked to iCloud.

I noticed that whenever I take a screenshot on my iPhone, the resultant photo appears in All Photos as well as the Screenshots album on my Phone and iCloud. I always thought that the folders were virtual mirrors, the photos inside being links (and not physical files) to the same photos in the All Photos main folder. It turns out to be incorrect.

I deleted all screenshots from the All Photos folder by connecting my iPhone to my Windows PC and physically moving the files. The screenshots are no longer in the All Photos folder. However, all screenshots still show up in the Screenshots folder, and in the corresponding folder in iCloud.

Does this mean that the screenshots in the eponymous folder are actual, duplicates of the physical files? To delete them, I need to delete the same file twice — once from All Photos and once from Screenshots?

Please illuminate. Thanks in advance!

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 12.1, 128GB

Posted on Nov 13, 2018 1:02 PM

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Answer 1

markwmsn

Level 6

14,999 points

Nov 13, 2018 3:43 PM in response to suirauqa

More likely, what it means is that "physically moving the files" using the Windows PC either (1) didn't trigger an update of the database that Photos uses to build the Screenshots album or (2) left a hard link behind that caused an equivalent problem. (Which it might be depends on internal implementation details unknown to me.)

Do you get an equivalent result if you delete the screenshots from All Photos using Photos on the phone?

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Answer 2

suirauqa Author

Level 1

72 points

Nov 15, 2018 1:00 PM in response to markwmsn

Thank you for your response, Mark. I'm sorry I couldn't get back to this sooner. Here is what I found out: it's not simple. 😀

My Screenshots folder on the iPhone was a mixture of old (from 2016, when I didn't have this particular iPhone; likely came in via iCloud) and new screenshots, not all of which were in the All Photos folder (and were therefore visible only through iCloud and in the Screenshots folder). I used the iCloud site to download all the screenshots to my computer, and then delete them. This cleaned up the Screenshots folder on the phone, too.

However, now when I take fresh screenshots, the image shows up in both All Photos and Screenshots (as it should), and deleting from one folder (via the iPhone) deletes it from both. If I connect the phone via USB and physically drag (move, not copy) the PNG files from DCIM >> 100 series folders into my computer, they are, again, gone from both the folders on the phone.

So, what prompted my initial post was likely the older screenshots taken with a different (older) iPhone that stuck around in the iCloud and synced with my latest iPhone's Screenshots folder (but did not go into the All Photos folder) in the Photos App. Now I feel a bit silly, but I'm leaving this post up here so that someone having the same experience as mine in the future may learn from my needless concern. 😊

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How do I delete screenshots from iPhone and iCloud?

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