The short answer
| What you are facing | The better tool |
|---|---|
| A year of photos you have never sorted | A swipe review, one month at a time. |
| Several copies of one photo | The duplicates search instead (guide). |
| Burst shots that look alike | The similar photos search and its compare view (guide). |
| One folder to empty | The Folders screen with Select all. |
Why swiping works for photos
Deciding about one photo is easy. Deciding about a screen of forty is not: the eye skims, the thumb hovers, and the session ends with nothing done. A swipe review turns the gallery into a sequence of single decisions, at the size a photo deserves, in an order that makes sense: a month at a time, oldest photo first, so the context of each shot is the shots around it.
It also suits the photos a grid handles worst: the ones that are not duplicates, not blurry and not large, just not worth keeping. No filter finds those. A person does, one at a time.
What a swipe cleaner must get right
- A swipe decides nothing by itself. Left should mark a photo, not remove it. The removal comes later, from a list you can read.
- Undo. Thumbs slip. The last swipe should always be reversible.
- A final check. Before anything moves, every marked photo in one place, all ticked, with the option to untick.
- The trash, not a delete. Even after a careful review, 30 days to change your mind cost nothing.
- A place to stop. A month is a natural unit; leaving halfway through should not lose the work or move anything.
Step by step in ClutterScrub
- Open Photos, Videos, Screenshots or Messaging media from Home and, with nothing selected, tap the swipe icon in the top bar (its label is Review one by one). Any filters you set first, such as Large only or an age, carry into the review.
- Pick a month. They are listed newest first, each with its count and size; a month you have finished says Reviewed until a newer item joins it.
- Swipe right to keep, left to mark for the trash. The Keep and Trash buttons do the same, and Undo takes back the last swipe. The counter shows where you are in the month and how many are marked.
- At the end of the month the screen says That was the whole month and offers Check marked. The Marked for the trash screen lists every marked photo, all ticked; untick anything you want to keep after all.
- Tap the button that names the count, Move 3 to trash for three marked photos, and confirm, in Android's own dialog by default, or in the app's own if media management is on and all your photos and videos are allowed. Finish, keep all ends the month without moving anything.
- Leave early if you need to. With photos marked, the screen asks whether to Check marked, Discard marks or Keep reviewing. If you only switch to another app mid-month, your place and your marks are kept on the phone until you come back.
The swipe review: one photo at the size it deserves, Trash, Undo and Keep below it, and where you are in the month above.
What swipe apps quietly get wrong
- Removing on the swipe. A gesture that deletes is a gesture that will delete the wrong photo. The swipe should mark; a list should remove.
- No undo, no list. Without both, a slip is permanent and a session is a leap of faith.
- Deleting instead of trashing. The 30 days in Android's trash are the whole safety net.
- Working in the cloud. A swipe review needs your photos at full size, one after another. There is no reason for that to involve a server, and a cleaner that needs a connection for it is doing something else as well.
How ClutterScrub handles it: a swipe only marks, Undo takes it back, every month ends in the Marked for the trash check, the removal goes to Android's trash once you confirm, and the app has no internet permission, so nothing it reads can leave your phone.
