How to delete (and undelete) photos

The act of 'deleting' a photo no longer deletes a photo - not properly. Instead, the photo moves to the Recently Deleted folder where it remains for 30 days unless you go to the folder and delete it from there.

To delete a photo open the photo and tap the waste paper basket. Choose Delete Photo.

Then go to Albums > Recently Deleted to locate the 'deleted' photo. Annoyingly it's not the most recent photo that shows up as the icon here, but the least recent. Open the album and tap on the image to get the options to Delete or Recover. If you choose to delete from here the image is gone. If you don't delete it but leave it in this folder it will disappear in 30 days time. You can also delete (or recover) all the images or a large number of images in one go by tapping Select > Delete All or Recover All or by tapping each image you wish to keep or delete. There is also a Delete All option.

Since we have a 16GB iPhone we frequently delete images to make space so this is an annoying extra step when we are trying to delete photos. While it might be useful to keep images available just in case you deleted them by accident, it used to be the case that those images remained in our Photo Stream even if we deleted them from Camera roll.

If you delete an image from your device it's not immediately removed. You have 30 days in which to change your mind. If you then decide you were wrong to delete it, go to the Recently Deleted folder, open the image and select Recover. You can also recover a group of photos. Tap Select, then select the images you wish to recover and tap Recover.

If you really want to delete the image, find it in the Recently Deleted folder, open the image and select Delete. You can also delete a group of photos this way. Tap Select, then select the images you wish to recover and tap Delete.