How to delete all images from a camera roll on an iPhone 4S

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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