The best swipe photo cleaner apps for iPhone

Swiping through your camera roll is the fastest way to clean it: swipe one way to keep a photo, the other way to delete it. Several apps do this well, and if you’re searching for a Swipewipe alternative, the good news is they all work roughly the same way, so there’s nothing to relearn.

Here are the ones worth knowing about. Full disclosure: the last one is ours.

1. Swipewipe

The most popular app in the category, with a 4.7 rating from over 80,000 reviews. Swipe left to delete, right to keep, clean month by month, review before anything is removed. Originally built by indie studio Afternoon Products, it’s now operated by app publisher MWM. It’s subscription-based, which is the main reason people go looking for alternatives.

2. Slidebox

One of the originals, going strong for years with a 4.8 rating. Slidebox uses a swipe-up-to-trash gesture and goes beyond cleanup: you can sort photos into albums and compare similar shots side by side as you go. A good pick if you want to organize your library, not just prune it.

3. Photo & Video Cleaner: Slider

The highest-rated of the bunch at 4.9. As the name says, it covers videos as well as photos, which matters because a few forgotten videos often take more space than a thousand photos.

4. Photo Organizer: Picnic

A swipe-to-sort organizer with a twist: instead of deleting straight away, swiping left sends photos to an archive you empty in one tap. Rated 4.8. Worth knowing before you pick it as your Swipewipe alternative: Picnic is made by MWM, the same publisher that operates Swipewipe.

5. Swipe2delete (that’s us)

Swipe2delete does the core job the same way you’d expect: swipe left to delete, right to keep, one month at a time, with an undo button and a final review before anything is deleted. On This Day resurfaces photos from past years so old clutter gets dealt with too. Over 27 million photos deleted so far.

The honest pitch for choosing ours: you can pay for it once. Swipe2delete is free to try, and Premium is available as a subscription or a single lifetime purchase. Cleaning your camera roll is an occasional job, and we don’t think it should be a permanent line item on your credit card. It’s also still built and supported by a small indie studio in Adelaide, Australia.

How to choose

  • Want to pay once and be done? Swipe2delete is the one with a lifetime purchase option.
  • Want to organize into albums while you clean? Slidebox.
  • Lots of big videos to clear out? Slider.
  • Prefer archiving over deleting straight away? Picnic.
  • Want the biggest user base? Swipewipe.

Whichever you pick, one tip applies to all of them: deleted photos sit in iOS’s Recently Deleted album for 30 days before the space is actually freed. Empty it after your cleanup to get the storage back immediately.

Download Swipe2delete on the App Store

Questions about Swipe2delete? See the FAQ. Ratings quoted as of July 2026.