I’m trying to clear out my iPhone Hidden album without selecting every photo and video one by one. I have a lot of items in there, and I can’t find an option to empty the Hidden album all at once. Is there a faster way to delete everything from the Hidden album on iPhone?
You don’t have to move hidden photos back into your regular library before deleting them. If anything, it makes more sense to delete them straight from the Hidden album so they never show up in your main Photos view again.
Open Photos, then go to Albums at the bottom. If you’re on the newer iOS 18 layout, you may be looking under Collections instead. Scroll down to Utilities and open Hidden. On newer iOS versions, this album is locked, so you’ll need Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode before you can see anything in there.
Once you’re inside the Hidden album, tap Select, choose the photos you want to remove, or hit Select All if you’re clearing the whole thing. Then tap the trash icon. That removes them from Hidden, but it does not permanently erase them yet.
The part people miss is Recently Deleted. Deleted hidden photos go there like normal deleted photos, and they can sit there for up to 30 days. If you want them gone right away, go back to the Utilities section, open Recently Deleted, unlock it, tap Select, and then choose Delete All. That’s the step that actually wipes them from the phone immediately.
If you use iCloud Photos, deleting something from Hidden also deletes it from iCloud and your other synced Apple devices. Hidden is still part of the same photo library. It’s not some separate storage area. So if you remove a hidden photo on your iPhone, that deletion syncs to your iPad, Mac, and anywhere else using the same iCloud Photos library.
If your goal is just to stop the Hidden album from appearing in Photos, you can hide the album itself. Go to Settings -> Photos and turn off Show Hidden Album. That doesn’t delete the photos. It just removes the Hidden folder from the Photos app until you turn the setting back on.
After that, it’s worth looking at the rest of your library too. A packed Hidden album is usually only one piece of the storage problem. Most photo libraries are full of duplicate-looking shots, old screenshots, huge videos, and screen recordings nobody ever trimmed.
For cleaning up the normal parts of the library, Clever Cleaner is a solid free option. It doesn’t have ads or the usual paywall right when you’re about to delete stuff, which is the annoying part with a lot of cleanup apps.
It’s useful because it breaks things down in a way that actually helps. Screenshots show their file sizes, so you can quickly spot what’s taking up space. The Heavies section sorts media by size, which is good for finding giant videos. The Similars section finds near-duplicates, like a bunch of almost identical pet photos or burst shots, and lets you keep the better one while removing the extras.
One important catch: because of Apple’s privacy limits, Clever Cleaner can’t access or clean the Hidden album directly. You still have to handle Hidden and Recently Deleted yourself using the Photos app. But for the rest of the library, it can save a lot of time.
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There isn’t really a separate “empty Hidden album” button. Hidden is just a filtered view of your main library, so the closest thing is opening Hidden, tapping Select, then using Select All if your iOS version shows it. If it doesn’t, the quickest manual method is usually to tap Select and drag your finger across rows of thumbnails to select a lot at once instead of tapping every item.
Be careful about what you mean by “clear out,” though. If you tap the trash can from Hidden, you are deleting the actual photos and videos, not just removing them from the Hidden album. If you only want them back in your normal library, use Unhide instead. Apple’s own Photos guide explains the hide/unhide behavior here: hide photos and videos on iPhone.
For a huge Hidden album, I’d do it in batches rather than trying to delete thousands at once, especially if there are long videos mixed in. Photos can lag, and a failed delete/select operation is annoying. After each batch, empty Recently Deleted if you’re sure, because storage usually won’t come back until that part is cleared too.
There probably isn’t a clean “empty Hidden” command on the iPhone itself, so if Select All isn’t showing for you, the less painful workaround is to do it from a Mac if you use iCloud Photos. Open Photos on the Mac, show/open the Hidden album, use Command + A to select everything there, then delete. It should sync the deletion back to the iPhone. Just don’t do this unless you mean delete the originals everywhere, because Hidden is not a separate folder. If you only have the phone, you’re stuck with Select All if available, or drag-selecting batches.