ClearSpace
User Guide
Find the photos actually eating your storage. Decide fast. Put the phone down.
The loop
Most photo cleaners hand you your library in the order you took it, which means you run out of patience wading through years of small, forgettable photos long before you reach the videos actually worth gigabytes. ClearSpace opens the other way round.
- Biggest first. The largest videos and photos lead the grid, each one labelled with roughly what it costs.
- Heart what you keep. Double-tap a photo, or tap its heart. Hearted photos leave the grid, so the pile only shrinks.
- Clear the rest. The bar at the bottom always shows what you haven't hearted, and what it's worth. Tap it when you're ready.
Keeping and Mode Switching
- [♥ Heart] Mode: Focused review mode. Double-tap any photo tile or tap its heart to mark it as Kept. Kept photos instantly filter out so your unreviewed queue shrinks with every decision.
- [✓ Select] Mode: Batch selection mode. Drag or tap across photos to select batches, file them into albums, or delete them together.
- Hide Hearted and Hide Albumed: Open the filter sheet (☰) to toggle these on or off. Hide Albumed lets you focus solely on photos that haven't been organized yet.
A heart here is the same Favourite you already see in Apple Photos — there's only one, and it's shared both ways.
Narrowing what you see
The row along the top filters the grid, and each filter has its own colour — filled means it's the one currently active.
Everything — the whole scope, unfiltered.
Videos — every clip in the library.
Over 2 min — usually the fastest gigabytes going, long videos filmed once and never watched again.
Photos — stills only.
Screenshots — usually the easiest decision in the app.
Live — Live Photos.
Slo-mo — high-frame-rate video.
Favourites — everything you've hearted, unaffected by Hide Hearted.
Getting around
- Calendar Scope Button: Tap the calendar button at the top (e.g.
[📅 Full timeline ▼]) to jump into finishable monthly review cohorts or custom albums. - Pinch the Grid: Adjust thumbnail density from seven columns across down to one.
- Fast Scrubber: Drag along the right edge to scrub across years of memories instantly.
- Browse Direction: In the filter sheet, choose between horizontal sideways swiping and snapping vertical scrolling for single-photo inspection.
Full screen & Zoom Inspection
Tap any photo to open full screen with instant 0ms media previews and zero loading flicker. Videos and Live Photos start playing on their own, with sound.
- Pinch-to-Zoom: Pinch anywhere on a photo or video to zoom up to 5x with smooth bounded panning.
- Double-Tap Zoom: Double-tap to toggle between 1x and 2.5x magnification.
- Heart — keeps the photo and advances to the next.
- Bookmark — files the photo directly into your last-used album with one tap, or opens the album menu.
- Trash — moves the photo to Recently Deleted and advances.
Albums & Quick-Add
Clearing space isn't only about deleting. Tap the Bookmark icon in full screen or select photos in the grid to file items into your Apple Photos albums, or start a new album on the spot.
Photos already filed in custom albums display a clean album capsule badge at the bottom of the screen.
Working in batches
Switch to [✓ Select] Mode when you already know what has to go — a burst of near-identical shots, or a run of screenshots.
- Tap or drag across tiles to select them.
- Select All Shown selects everything in the current filter.
- Heart, Add to Album, or Delete applies to the whole selection in one action.
What happens when you delete
Deleted photos go to Recently Deleted in Apple's Photos app, where they sit for 30 days. Nothing is destroyed, and you can get any of it back during that window.
Your storage doesn't go down until Recently Deleted is emptied. Until then, the photos still occupy the same space they always did. Open Photos → Albums → Recently Deleted → Select → Delete All to finish the job and get the space back.
What's free, what's paid
Finding, sorting, filtering, hearting, filing into albums, and deleting photos one at a time are all free, with no limit.
Clearing photos in bulk is unlocked by a one-time lifetime purchase. No subscription, ever. If you own Unli Disk for Mac, ClearSpace Pro unlocks automatically on your iPhone via iCloud when signed in with the same Apple Account.
About the sizes
The figure on each photo, shown with a ~, is a close estimate worked out from the photo's own details — its dimensions, its length, and the format it was recorded in — rather than by opening the file. That's what makes sorting a huge library by size instant instead of a multi-minute wait.
Privacy
ClearSpace reads your library on your device and nowhere else. No account, no analytics, no trackers, nothing uploaded. Full detail in the Privacy Policy.