Happy Tuesday!
We're in Week 2 of December's Digital Reset series. Last time, we covered some quick steps to get your phone into a less cluttered state. This week we're talking about photos.
To be honest, photos are probably the hardest category to "reset." You can archive all your emails in one swoop, and it's not that hard to delete a bunch of old or stale apps from your phone. But photos are emotionally loaded in a way that documents and downloads aren't. That picture of your kid's first birthday party isn't the same as a shipping confirmation from 2019.
So instead of pretending you can wipe the slate clean, let's focus on a few targeted tasks that still fit the "reset" spirit without requiring you to make difficult decisions about memories, especially in the middle of a season when we often make so many new ones.
Clear Out the Junk That Isn't Really "Photos"
Your camera roll probably contains a lot of images that aren't actually photos you took:
- Memes you saved
- Screenshots of recipes you'll never make
- Images that auto-downloaded from WhatsApp, Messenger, or whatever other messaging apps you use
These apps can be sneaky. Some of them save images that come through conversations directly to your phone's storage, whether you wanted it or not. Take a few minutes to hunt these down, just scrolling quickly to look for anything that seems like it doesn't below. On most phones, you can also find them grouped separately from your actual camera photos. Look for folders or albums labeled things like "WhatsApp Images" or "Downloads" or "Saved." Be ruthless here...you're not deleting memories; you're deleting digital debris.
While you're at it, if you do notice a lot of these types of images, check your messaging app settings to see if you can turn off auto-saving entirely. Future you will appreciate not having to go through this process again.
Clear Out the "Photos" That Are Really Junk
See what I did there? Word play is fun.
As you scroll through your camera roll, look for any photos that really didn't turn out. Sometimes those are hard to identify in the moment that you took them, but with some distance, it can be easier to make that call: "Why did I keep that? It's totally blurry!" or "My expression is ridiculous," or "That was way too dark."
Don't obsess over the photos that are tough to decide about. This "reset" pass is only to find the so-called low-hanging fruit and get rid of it.
Delete Stale or Empty Albums
Remember that album you created called "Print These" back in 2022? Or "Send to Mom"? Or maybe something optimistic like "Best of 2023"? Maybe you've got a handful of albums that served a purpose once but are now just sitting there, either empty or containing photos you already dealt with long ago. They're the digital equivalent of empty folders in a filing cabinet, except you have to scroll past them every time you're looking for something.
Spend a couple of minutes scanning your album list and delete any empty ones. For albums that still have photos in them, ask yourself whether the album's purpose has been fulfilled. If you already printed those photos or sent them to Mom, you don't need the album anymore. (The photos themselves will stay in your main library; deleting an album doesn't delete the photos inside.)
Finish What You Started
Here's a sneaky one: your "Recently Deleted" album. When you delete photos on your phone, they don't actually disappear right away. They sit in a holding area for 30 days, still taking up storage space, waiting for you to either recover them or let them expire. It's a nice safety net, but it also means that all those deletion decisions you made over the past month haven't actually freed up any space yet.
If you're not someone who constantly runs out of storage space, I normally recommend leaving the your "recently deleted" stuff (a.k.a. "trash" or "recycle bin") alone. Your phone or computer or cloud platform will empty it for you automatically, and I do appreciate that safety net, being able to rescue some digital artifact from the jaws of impending doom at the last second because I realized it was actually important...although, that almost never actually happens. But if you find yourself constantly running into space limitations, this is a good trick to keep in mind.
To fully delete these items, go to your Recently Deleted album (or folder, or trash, depending on your platform) and empty it. This also works for cloud services like Google Photos or iCloud Photos; they have their own trash folders that work the same way. This is the most satisfying task of the three because you've already done the hard work of deciding what to delete. You're just completing the job.
The Point of All This
None of these tasks require you to agonize over which vacation photos to keep; that's a bigger project for another time. But by clearing out the junk, removing stale albums, and finishing your deletions, you'll have a slightly cleaner photo library going into the new year. And sometimes a small reset is all you need to feel a little more in control. If you're interested in a more in-depth dive into photos, check out what we covered during Photos Month (February) during Tidy '24.
Have you ever done any of these tasks before? I'm curious whether this is a big source of clutter for others or if it's just me.
Until next week, happy data-taming!