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. - Sort order: Four orders, chosen from the settings sheet — Biggest first (the default), Newest first, Oldest first, and Longest first for video. The sort applies inside a monthly cohort too, so a month still opens with its heaviest items.
- Start at: Alongside the sort, choose whether the grid opens at the top or the bottom of that order — useful when you want the smallest or oldest end first without reversing the sort itself.
- Narrow to a year or an album: The settings sheet also scopes the whole grid to a single year, or to one of your own Photos albums, so a review can be as small as you want it to be.
- Pinch the Grid: Adjust thumbnail density across five steps — seven columns, five, three, two, or one photo filling the width.
- 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: it appears sharp straight away from the copy Photos already keeps on the device, so there is no loading spinner. If the photo lives only in iCloud, the one you tapped downloads first, ahead of anything else. Zooming in loads the full original. Videos and Live Photos start playing on their own, with sound, and the sound stops as soon as you move on.
- 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.
iPad and sideways iPhone
On iPad, or an iPhone turned sideways, tapping a photo opens it beside the grid instead of over it. Your place in the grid stays exactly where you left it, so you can work down the grid and inspect as you go.
- Swap sides — the swap button in the toolbar moves the photo to the other side.
- Hide the viewer — the panel button gives the whole screen back to the grid.
- Split View and Stage Manager — ClearSpace fits whatever size window you give it on iPad.
- Sideways iPhone — the controls move to the edge of the screen, so photos get the full height.
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 is included: email me for a one-time App Store code that unlocks it.
If the purchase screen can't reach the App Store, it tries again on its own and shows a Try again button rather than an empty screen.
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.