Posts I hope this saves somebody out there some time.
I just wasted an hour or so of my holiday trying to delete 3200 images from my iphone which were stopping me from taking any more photos (or doing anything else) with it. I had already backed up my images both to iPhoto and the two 1TB disks we are carrying with us – so I just wanted them gone.
Here is one of the pics that I wanted to delete, the sight that greeted us in the hotel lobby for New Year’s Eve. Not for a party, just because the staff were being festive. The place where we are staying has a 4:30-5:30 wine and cheese session every afternoon, where hotel guests can gather in the lobby and eat sweet and savoury biscuits, cheese and wine (with juice boxes for the kids).
I did not fancy manually clicking on each image and then selecting “delete” from the iPhone. I could not drag them manually into the iPhoto Trash folder from the iPhone. Some sources suggested going into iTunes and syncing the photos to an empty folder created on the computer just for that purpose – but it did not work.
The solution is something called Image Capture - an application that comes with OS X mainly to upload from digital cameras. Plug in iPhone, use Spotlight to find Image Capture, then tell it to sync the device to Image Capture not iPhoto in the app settings. Highlight all the images, then use the red circle with a line through it symbol to delete.
Takes a while – around half an hour or so for 3000 images. I have had time to write this blog post instead of going out cycling across the Golden Gate Bridge, which I would much, much rather do on New Year’s Day. I guess I would have been better off actually deleting images each day when I uploaded instead of waiting for the phone to fill up.
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Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! I’ve been working on this for HOURS! I had to first upgrade to Lion, then I had to sync ALL my photos to photo stream, now I am deleting my 3300 photos. It is still deleting but I can’t wait to have more room on my new 4S! You rock! Thanks again!
Thank you so much! My 2,500+ photos are deleting now. Hopefully my phone will be a little faster now.
Thank you!
My little daughter fancies the Camera on my iPhone and keeps clicking photos and videos endlessly. Deleting them via Image Capture was a breeze! Thanks for sharing the tip.
This also solves my problem of iPhoto popping up every time I connected the phone. I just selected “No Application” instead of iPhoto. I can now manually open iPhoto when I want to import!
You certainly did not get to ride that day, but you saved time for many people on the planet
Thank you so much! This has been plaguing me for ages! Things like this frustrate me so much, such epic failure for such a generally awesome UX team.
omg, thank you! you just saved me HOURS of time deleting them all by hand!!!
i just did this and it didnt work and i lost all my photos. i am mortified.
This is awesome thank you!
THANK YOU for taking the time to explain. JUST what I needed!
THANK YOU!!! You’ve been a life saver!