Clean up iPhone screenshots and saved images with iOS 27’s Captured by Me

Most iPhone libraries are two libraries mixed together. One is the photos and videos you took. The other is everything that arrived some other way: screenshots of directions and receipts, screen recordings you made once, memes saved from group chats, images forwarded on WhatsApp, pictures downloaded from Safari. The second library grows without you deciding to keep any of it.

Until now, iPhone had no clean way to split the two. iOS 27 adds one, and with it the cleanup gets a lot faster.

What Captured by Me does in iOS 27

Captured by Me is a new collection in the Photos app. According to MacRumors, it gathers every image you’ve taken with the Camera app on your current or previous iPhone. 9to5Mac describes it as the camera roll people have wanted back for years: screenshots and images friends sent you are left out.

You can reach it two ways:

• As a collection: open Photos, tap Collections, scroll to Utilities and tap Captured by Me. If you’ll use it often, edit Utilities and move it to the top.
• As a filter: tap Library, tap the sort-and-filter button (three lines) at the top right, and pick Captured by Me. Apple’s guide notes you can stack several filters at once, and Remove Filters takes you back to the full library.

One thing to be clear on: Captured by Me shows the keepers, not the clutter. There’s no “everything except Captured by Me” view, and the filter doesn’t delete or move anything. Its value for cleanup is as a reference. Scroll the Library with the filter on, then off, and the gap between the two is the non-camera pile you’re about to clear. It also means you can bulk-delete in the clutter collections below without worrying about your own shots, because those all have a home in Captured by Me.

Where the clutter lives in Photos

Apple already sorts most non-camera content into its own collections. These are the four worth opening, in order of how fast they pay off.

Screenshots

Tap Collections, scroll down to Media Types, then tap Screenshots. Every screenshot you’ve taken is in one grid. You can also get the same view from the Library by using the Media Types filter, which Apple says can show only photos, only videos or only screenshots.

Screen Recordings

Same route: Collections, Media Types, Screen Recordings. These are easy to forget and they’re videos, so a few minutes of a recorded game, tutorial or video call can outweigh hundreds of screenshots. Open this one even if you think you never record your screen.

Recently Saved

This is the collection most people have never opened. Apple says it holds photos and videos saved from other apps, such as Messages, Safari and Mail, plus anything sent to you with AirDrop. That’s where the memes, downloaded images and “save this for later” pictures end up. It sits below Pinned in Collections, and again under Utilities. For a daily habit, the Saved Today collection under Recent Days shows only what landed today.

The WhatsApp album

If WhatsApp has been saving media for you, those images and videos usually sit in an album called WhatsApp as well as in your main library. Open it from your albums and you’ll see months of group-chat photos, videos and forwards in one place.

How to bulk-delete screenshots and saved images

The steps are the same in any of the collections above, and in the Library with a filter applied:

1. Open the collection, for example Media Types > Screenshots.
2. Tap Select.
3. Tap the first thumbnail and, without lifting, drag your finger sideways and then down. iPhone selects every thumbnail you pass over, row by row, which is far quicker than tapping each one.
4. Tap any you want to keep to deselect them.
5. Tap the trash button and confirm.

Deleted items go to Recently Deleted and stay there for 30 days, still taking up space on your iPhone. To free the space now, tap Collections, open Recently Deleted under Utilities, tap View Album and confirm it’s you with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. Then tap Select, pick the items and delete them permanently. Our guide on whether Recently Deleted takes up storage covers this step in full, and how long iPhone storage takes to update explains why the number in Settings can lag behind.

Stop WhatsApp filling your library

Clearing the WhatsApp album is pointless if every new group photo lands straight back in it. WhatsApp’s own switch fixes that:

1. Open WhatsApp and tap Settings.
2. Tap Chats.
3. Turn off Save to Photos.

New photos and videos then stay inside WhatsApp, and you can still save a single image by hand when you want it. Two things to know. The switch doesn’t remove anything already saved, so the cleanup above still applies. And WhatsApp keeps its own copy of media inside the chat, so deleting an image from Photos doesn’t remove it from the conversation. If you want most chats off but one family group on, each chat and group has its own version of the setting in Contact Info or Group Info.

Other messaging apps can have their own auto-save options, so check the settings of the ones you use.

Hiding screenshots is not deleting them

iOS 27 has another clutter option that is easy to mistake for a cleanup. In the Library, tap the sort-and-filter button, then View Options, and you can hide Screenshots, From My Mac and Shared with You items from the main grid. Apple describes this as a way to reduce clutter, and it does make the Library look tidier.

It frees no space. Hidden screenshots are still on your iPhone and in iCloud at full size. Use View Options if you like a cleaner grid, but delete the ones you don’t need first.

Habits that keep screenshots from piling up

• Delete from the preview. After you take a screenshot, Apple’s preview has a delete option. If you only needed it for a moment, delete it there, before it joins the library.
• Copy text instead of capturing it. Addresses, codes and recipes do better as a note. Copy the text, or use the share sheet to send a link to Notes or Reminders, and nothing is added to Photos.
• Check Saved Today once in a while. Thirty seconds on that collection at the end of a busy day clears the memes and downloads before they age into the library.
• Turn off auto-save in every messaging app, not only WhatsApp.

Where LuminaClean fits

Apple’s collections get you to the clutter. The slow part is deciding, item by item, what can go, especially with a few thousand screenshots spread across several years. That’s the part LuminaClean speeds up.

It scans your photo library on-device and pulls screenshots into their own group, alongside AI categories such as Text, Travel, People and Food that help you spot receipts and notes worth keeping. You review each group one photo at a time, swiping to keep or delete. Flashback lets you scan one year at a time, so you can clear 2022’s screenshots in one sitting, and large-video flagging and the media-type filter surface long screen recordings. The same scan finds duplicate and near-duplicate photos and blurry shots, which is often where the rest of the wasted space is.

Nothing is deleted without your swipe, and every deletion lands in iOS Recently Deleted first, so the 30-day safety net still applies. It doesn’t detect memes or forwarded WhatsApp images as a category, and it can’t change WhatsApp’s settings or clear the copies inside your chats. For those, Recently Saved, the WhatsApp album and the Save to Photos switch are the right tools. The free tier gives you 65 free deletes to start, then +10 every day, with full detection and no account. An optional Premium subscription removes the limit if you want to clear a big library in one go.

Related guides

• iPhone Storage Full? How to Free Up Space — the full pillar guide.
• iPhone Storage Still Full After Deleting Photos? — when photos weren’t the problem.
• Do Photos in Recently Deleted Take Up Storage? — the step that frees the space.
• How to Delete Duplicate Photos on iPhone — the next pile after screenshots.

Frequently asked questions

How do I delete all screenshots on my iPhone at once?

Open Photos, tap Collections, scroll to Media Types and tap Screenshots. Tap Select, then drag a finger across the thumbnails to pick whole rows at a time, and tap the trash button. The screenshots move to Recently Deleted, so open that collection under Utilities and delete them from there to free the space straight away.

What does Captured by Me do in iOS 27 Photos?

It shows only the photos and videos taken with the Camera app, on your current iPhone and past ones. Screenshots and images other people sent you are left out. It lives in the Utilities section of Collections, and it is also a filter you can switch on in the Library tab. It doesn’t delete or move anything.

Where do saved images from Messages, Safari and AirDrop go on iPhone?

Apple puts them in the Recently Saved collection, which you’ll find below Pinned in Collections and also under Utilities. It gathers photos and videos saved from other apps like Messages, Safari and Mail, plus anything sent to you with AirDrop, so it’s a good place to bulk-delete memes and one-off saves.

How do I stop WhatsApp saving photos to my iPhone?

In WhatsApp, open Settings, tap Chats and turn off Save to Photos. New photos and videos then stay inside WhatsApp. The setting doesn’t remove images already saved to your library, so you still need to clear those in Photos. Individual chats and groups also have their own version of the setting in Contact Info or Group Info.

Does hiding screenshots in the library free up storage?

No. The View Options setting in the Library can hide screenshots and items shared with you from the main grid, but the files stay on your iPhone and in iCloud at full size. Only deleting them, and then emptying Recently Deleted, gives the space back.