I’m trying to free up iPhone storage by deleting every photo that isn’t marked as a favorite, but I can’t find a reliable way to do it. Filters, albums, and bulk selection haven’t worked the way I expected. Is there a safe method to remove all non-favorite photos without losing my favorites?
If you’re trying to keep only your favorited photos on an iPhone, the annoying part is that Apple doesn’t give you a clean “delete everything except favorites” button. There’s no built-in non-favorites filter, and there’s no “select all except these” option. You have to work around it.
First, make sure deletion is actually what you want. If you’re mainly trying to recover space on the phone, go to Settings - Photos and turn on Optimize iPhone Storage. That keeps smaller local versions on the iPhone and stores the full-resolution originals in iCloud. Nothing gets deleted, and your photos are still available. This only helps if iCloud Photos is enabled and your iCloud storage has room.
If you really do want to delete the non-favorites, the best native workaround is to temporarily hide your favorites:
- Open the Favorites album, tap Select, then Select All
- Tap the three dots and choose Hide
- Go back to the main Library view, where only non-favorites should be visible
- Tap Select and start selecting the remaining photos. For big libraries, tap and hold the last photo, then tap near the top of the screen with another finger to jump-select a large range
- Delete the selected photos
- Open the Hidden album under Utilities, select everything there, and tap Unhide
That brings your favorites back into the main library, while the non-favorites stay deleted.
Be careful if iCloud Photos is turned on. Deleting a photo from your iPhone also deletes it from iCloud and from every device connected to that same library. iOS does not have a “delete from phone but keep in iCloud” option for iCloud Photos. If you need to keep the originals, use Optimize iPhone Storage instead, or turn off iCloud Photos before doing this. Just know that turning it back on later can start another sync.
Large photo libraries make this more painful than it should be. Once you’re dealing with something like 10,000+ photos, the Photos app can get flaky during bulk actions. Selection can drop halfway through, deletes can freeze, and the storage number may not update right away. Smaller batches are safer, but obviously slower.
Low iPhone storage makes the whole thing worse too. When the phone is almost full, iOS has less room for temporary processing. That’s when you start seeing laggy scrolling, camera delays, and Photos freezing during basic cleanup work.
After you clear the main library, it’s still worth checking what’s actually using space. Big videos, bursts, repeated shots, and screenshots can take up more room than regular non-favorite photos.
Clever Cleaner is free, with no ads or subscription. The Heavies tab sorts files from largest to smallest and shows exact sizes, so huge forgotten 4K videos are easy to spot. The Similars tab groups near-duplicate photos and picks a Best Shot from each set, which helps with bursts and repeated attempts at the same photo. The Screenshots tab also shows the file size for each screenshot before you delete anything. Processing happens on the device, with nothing uploaded elsewhere.
One last step matters a lot: deleted photos still sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days, and they still count against your storage during that time. After cleanup, go to Photos - Albums - Recently Deleted - Delete All. If the storage number still looks wrong after that, restart the iPhone so iOS can recalculate the available space.
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Don’t trust the Favorites album as your only “backup” before doing this. A favorite is just a tag on the same photo, not a separate saved copy. If the wrong batch gets selected, you can delete favorites too, and Recently Deleted is your only easy undo until it empties.
I agree with the hide-favorites workaround, but I’d make a safety copy of the favorites first if the photos matter. Use Share to save/export them somewhere outside the Photos library, like Files, a computer, an external drive, Google Photos, Dropbox, etc. Even a temporary folder is better than relying on iOS selection not to glitch during a huge delete. Albums can be misleading here too, because removing something from an album is not the same as deleting it, and deleting from the library removes it everywhere in that library.
For a large cleanup, I’d do it in boring chunks instead of trying to nuke the whole library at once. Select a month or year, delete, clear Recently Deleted, then check storage after a restart. It takes longer, but it’s less likely to fail halfway through and leave you wondering what actually happened. If your real goal is phone space rather than permanently removing photos, Optimize iPhone Storage is still the less risky path.
This is probably going to be clumsy if you only have the iPhone in your hand. The cleaner way, if you have access to a Mac using the same iCloud Photos library, is to use Photos on the Mac and make a Smart Album with the rule “Photo is not Favorite,” then review that album, select all, and delete from there. That avoids the hide/unhide juggling on the phone and gives you a real negative filter. The catch is the same one others mentioned: with iCloud Photos on, that delete syncs everywhere, so export or back up the favorites first if you’d be upset losing them. If you don’t have a Mac, then yeah, the iPhone-only method is basically a workaround, not a proper feature.
There is no magic switch for this on the phone.
If you want an iPhone-only option that is less finger-dragging than hiding favorites, try Shortcuts before you spend an hour selecting thumbnails. In the Shortcuts app, make a shortcut that uses Find Photos, add a filter for Favorite is false if your iOS version shows it, then pass those results to Delete Photos. Run it on a small test batch first, not your whole library. iOS may still ask for confirmation, and it can choke on huge libraries, but it is closer to the missing “delete all non-favorites” button than the Photos app itself.
I would not run that kind of shortcut blind on 20,000 items. Add a limit at first, like 20 or 50 photos, and make sure it is grabbing exactly what you think it is. If the filter is not available on your phone, then the Mac Smart Album method mentioned above is probably the cleanest answer.
And yes, favorites are only a label. Before doing any mass delete, export the favorites somewhere outside Apple Photos if they matter. After deleting, clear Recently Deleted or you will wonder why your storage barely changed.