How to Declutter and Organize Photos on iPhone

Struggling to find photos on your iPhone? Is your library filled with duplicates, screenshots, and random images? Below, you’ll find easy and practical ways to organize photos on your iPhone as well as tidy up your photo storage.
How iOS 18 Changed Photo Organization.

Let’s start with what’s new in iOS 18. The latest update brings a few tweaks to the Photos app. According to the latest iPhone User Guide, here’s what you can do now:

• Reorder collections.
• Hide unnecessary sections.
• Pin collections for easy access.

Additionally, the editing mode now allows you to change the background color for a more comfortable viewing experience, and autoplay for Live Photos and videos can be disabled to reduce distractions. These updates may help you keep your photo library more organized and definitely more personalized.

Also Read: How to Know if Someone Blocked You on iMessage

How to Declutter Photos on iPhone

In terms of photo library cleaning, there have been no major improvements since iOS 16. You can still go through each photo and video manually to remove unnecessary ones or use the Duplicates folder to merge exact identical copies – but that’s pretty much it.

The Duplicates feature still has limitations. It only detects exact matches, so similar photos – like multiple portraits of the same person, slightly different angles of the same shot, or near-identical images from the same event – won’t be flagged. Plus, there’s still no way to sort files by size, which makes it impossible to quickly clear storage by removing large, unnecessary files.

That’s exactly why many people prefer third-party apps, and for this guide, we’ll use Clever Cleaner: AI Photo Organizer – one of the best 100% free apps for photo organization. Unlike the built-in tools, Clever Cleaner uses AI to scan your library for not just duplicates but also similar images and other media files you might not want in your Photos app.

Here’s how you can use Clever Cleaner to declutter photos on your iPhone:

1. Open the app and tap the Similars tab. The app will automatically group similar photos.
2. Tap Smart Cleanup at the bottom. The app will suggest photos for deletion. The AI automatically selects the best photo to keep in each group.
3. Want to keep a specific group? To get back, click Restore and take it off the deleted items.
4. If you approve the AI’s selections, use Slide to delete all marked photos.
5. Prefer manual review? Tap on a group to compare photos yourself.
6. You can choose a different Best shot to keep.
7. Hit Move to Trash if you want to delete the photos, or tap Skip All to keep them. 
8. When you’re done, just tap Empty Trash at the bottom to clear everything out.

This is just one way to declutter your iPhone. Clever Cleaner also includes three other tools:

• The Screenshots tab scans your library, identifies images saved as screenshots, and lets you review and delete them in bulk.
• The Lives tab identifies all Live Photos and allows you to convert them into regular still images.
• The Heavies tab sorts videos by size, starting with the largest files. This makes it easy to delete huge, unnecessary videos quickly and easily, something that, as we mentioned, you still can’t do without third-party app help.

As you can see, this is a very useful set of tools. Clever Cleaner is a great way to organize photos on your iPhone automatically without having to pay or even watch ads. If you want to explore more options, check out this rating of the best third-party apps to organize photos on an iPhone.

How to Organize Pictures on iPhone

Now, let’s get back to what tools your iPhone already has out of the box to help you make sense of all those thousands of photos. As we said at the beginning, with recent updates, the Photos app offers a solid set of features to keep everything structured and easy to navigate. Here’s how to make the most of them.

1. Create and Manage Albums 

The easiest way to organize photos on your iPhone is with the help of the albums. Instead of endlessly scrolling through your entire library, albums help you group related photos for quick access.

How to create an album:

1. Go to Albums within the Photos app to begin viewing.
2. Tap the Create button in the top right, then choose New Album.
3. Name your album and tap Save.
4. Choose photos, then tap Add to complete the selection.

Albums work best for grouping photos by event, category, or subject. You can create one for vacations, family, work, or any other theme. Since albums don’t duplicate photos, removing an image from an album won’t delete it from your library.

As you may have noticed, when you create an album, there is also a Folder option. If you’re like this Reddit user and have never dealt with it, the difference is simple. Albums hold photos, while folders can hold albums. While folders can’t store standalone photos, they’re perfect for grouping albums. A “Vacations” folder, for example, can hold albums for each trip you’ve taken.

2. Use the People & Pets Album for Quick Access

Your iPhone can automatically detect faces, people, scenes, and objects within photos. And since iOS 17, the Photos app can recognize dogs and cats, too. It creates a People & Pets album (or just a People album if no pets are identified) to group photos in one place.

How to name and manage faces in the People & Pets album:

1. Open the Photos app and then select the Albums tab.
2. Scroll down to People & Pets and tap on a detected face.
3. Tap Add Name, enter the person’s or pet’s name, and tap Next.
4. Confirm the name and tap Done to save.

The more you tag and confirm detected faces, the better iOS gets at recognizing them in new photos. If the app misses a person, you can manually tag them. Just tap the “i” icon on a photo and select “Name This Person”.

Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide to Managing and Using Your Apple ID

3. Utilize Smart Search and Metadata

Once your albums are set up and your people and pets are named, finding photos is simple with Smart Search. Your iPhone can instantly locate any tagged person or pet and also can find photos using metadata like locations, objects, text, and even activities.

How to use smart search on iPhone:

1. Tap the search icon in the upper right corner of the Photos app.
2. Looking for a photo of your pet? Just type their name. Want to find beach pictures? Simply type “beach.”
3. Adding specifics like “beach 2025” can help you focus if you can recall the year or location.

To keep things even more organized, add captions to key photos. Just swipe up on a picture, tap Add a Caption, and type some short description. This will help your iPhone refine its searches.

Final Thoughts 

To sum up, the best way to organize photos on your iPhone is to clear out the clutter first with a good cleanup app. After that, take advantage of the built-in features we covered – albums, folders, and tags – and don’t skip any of them if you want a well-structured library. And in the end, whenever you need to find a photo, Smart Search or albums will make it a breeze.