Top 7 Ways to Fix iPhone Recently Deleted Photos Won't Delete

Getting rid of old and unwanted photos can help you reclaim storage space. However, deleting these photos can be painful. Sending images to the Recently Deleted folder or trash found in gallery apps on a phone is not enough. It continues to take storage. And when you try to free up storage space, it doesn’t happen. No matter how many times you try, these photos in the Recently Deleted folder on the iPhone will not be deleted and this can be confusing and sometimes frustrating.

Yes. Some iPhone users when trying to free up storage space by deleting the recently deleted folder cannot do so. They get an error such that the photos cannot be deleted. In some cases, the photos remain in the Recently Deleted folder even if the Delete button has been pressed.

So if erasing recently deleted photos doesn’t work for you on iPhone, here are some ways to fix it. Before that, read our article on what happens when you delete photos from iPhone.

1. Restart the phone

You need to start solving the problem by restarting your phone. Once you have restarted the phone, try to delete the photos. If all goes well, the error will disappear and if you had previously deleted some photos that reappear, they will also be deleted.

2. Try another method to delete the recently deleted album

The normal way to delete the recently deleted folder is to open it in Albums and press the Delete All button. If that doesn’t work, you should try to do it from the settings.

To do this, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open the Settings app on your iPhone and go to General.

2nd step: Tap iPhone Storage. You will find the installed applications listed as well as the storage consumed. Tap Photos.

Stage 3: Tap Empty next to the recently deleted album.

3. Batch delete

If you have more than 500 images, you should delete the smaller batch files instead of deleting them all at once.

To do this, go to the recently deleted folder and press Select. Tap a photo to select it, then slide your finger across the photos to select them. Keep track of the selected photos at the top. Select 400 to 500 photos in one batch and delete them. If that doesn’t work either, try selecting a batch of 100.

4. Give time

If the photos don’t disappear as soon as you hit the Delete All button, don’t worry. Give it at least 5-10 minutes if you plan to delete a bunch of photos. Indeed, there is a lot of data and their deletion will take time.

5. Disable automatic locking

Many iPhone users suggest that keeping the Apple Photos app in the foreground helped delete the photos for them. The reason behind this could be that the Photos application ends the deletion process when the application is in the foreground. So if the screen goes blank, the process may stop.

Therefore, you should prevent it from sleeping for a while if you are trying to delete a large number of photos from the recently deleted folder. To do this, go to Settings> Display and brightness> Automatic locking. Set it to Never. Wait 30 to 60 minutes. Then check the Photos app. If the photos are gone, you can change the auto lock setting.

6. Disable low power mode

For the same reason as mentioned above, you must also deactivate the low power mode. It also interferes when you have many photos to delete from the Recently deleted folder.

To deactivate it, go to Settings> Battery> Low consumption mode.

Pro tip: Keep touching the screen to prevent it from sleeping.