Removing photographs from iDevices using Windows.

[KevinJS]

I've just posted this on iPadForums, but I thought I'd dump it here too, as it seems to be a common problem. Mods, if you feel it would be more useful in a different part of the forum, feel free to move it.


I know there have been several people who have been baffled by the seemingly impossible task of removing large amounts of photographs from iDevices, myself included, so I've done some digging.

This was tested on an iPhone 4 (stock) and a PC running Vista SP2 64 bit.

Plug your iDevice into the PC using USB. In Windows Explorer, right click on the iDevice, and select "import pictures". A box will appear on the screen. Click on "options", then check "Always delete after importing". Click "Import".

The photographs and videos will be imported to your PC, and then Windows will delete the photographs from the iDevice. After the deletions, I needed to reboot my iPhone, but the pictures and videos had gone.

Hope this info is useful for other members.

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[topgun80]

what if I don't want the pics deleted off my iphone4, I just want to copy them onto my computer. I've looked at my device in mycomputer and it only lists what's in the "camera roll", no other pic folders are listed.

[KevinJS]

what if I don't want the pics deleted off my iphone4, I just want to copy them onto my computer. I've looked at my device in mycomputer and it only lists what's in the "camera roll", no other pic folders are listed.

Deselect the "delete after transfer" option. If you don't want to delete them you can simply select them in Windows Explorer and drag them to wherever you want them copied to.

The other folders won't show in Windows because the photographs in them are not image files, they are links to the image file in Camera Roll.

[topgun80]

the pictures in the other folders are not in "camera roll". Windows only shows 1 folder and it contains ONLY what's in camera roll. Is there any way to access the othe pic folders? If I sync to my new computer will itunes copy all the pic folders to my hard drive?