Unable to delete or edit photos in Photos app

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SKirtonBear2 Author

Level 1

10 points

Unable to delete or edit photos in Photos app

I have photos on my iPhone that won't allow me to edit nor delete them. Some are screenshots.

I don't use iCloud for photos, so they aren't coming from there.

How do I remove them?

Tried removing them by:

sync'ing to my Mac and checking the "Delete Items After Import" box.

BTW: Found a crazy setting in iMessages that was automatically duplicating images/videos into another space that was hidden - deleted what I could there (space hog).

These images/videos have no Trash can icon and sometimes an edit icon choice isn't there either, just Duplicate. (I don't want another copy!)

Seriously, I've heard lots of people trying to remove images from their phones without wiping them clean and starting over.

What can I do to remove images from Photos app on my iPhone?

Running the latest software and sync'ing through my Mac on the latest software,

iPhone 12 Pro Max, iOS 26

Posted on Nov 25, 2025 4:08 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,495 points

Nov 26, 2025 2:30 AM in response to SKirtonBear2

You wrote:

"These images/videos have no Trash can icon and sometimes an edit icon choice isn't there either, just Duplicate. (I don't want another copy!)"

This is typical for images, that have been synced from a Mac to your iPhone. Are these images shown in an album in a folder "From my Mac"? Then you can only delete them by syncing the iPhone again with your Mac and deselecting the items that you do not want on your iPhone. The newly synced photos will replace the previously synced item.

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Answer 2

Nov 26, 2025 6:34 AM in response to SKirtonBear2

Photos that cannot be deleted or edited are almost always coming from a read-only source: Finder/Mac sync, Messages’ hidden storage, third-party apps, or corrupted files. To remove them, disable Finder photo syncing on your Mac, clear Messages media storage, delete media inside apps like WhatsApp/Telegram, or reset photo indexing. After removing the source, your iPhone will allow normal deletion.

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Answer 3

Ingo2711

Level 10

80,025 points

Nov 26, 2025 2:16 AM in response to SKirtonBear2

Did you try to go to the Library of your Photos App, tap on "Select" in the right above corner, and see if you can select those photos and move them to the trash by taping on the Trash icon in the right corner below?

If you tap on the " i ", can you see which device took the photo?

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Answer 4

Ingo2711

Level 10

80,025 points

Nov 26, 2025 2:42 AM in response to léonie

Thanks for your valuable input, léonie!

I have totally forgotten about this fact, since I only use my Mac to backup my photo from the iPhone and stopped syncing photos from the Mac to the iPhone a very long time ago.

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Answer 5

Nov 26, 2025 6:51 AM in response to SKirtonBear2

SKirtonBear2 wrote: …What can I do to remove images from Photos app on my iPhone?

… sync'ing through my Mac on the latest software,

As léonie says, you get rid of these pictures by replacing them when you re-sync-- even if you re-sync an empty set. Syncing pictures from the Mac was thought to be for temporary viewing, so Photos doesn't fully control them. So "syncing" isn't really synchronizing at all.

In the future, if you have some of these pictures that you want to save, you can use Share>Save to Files, and then Share>Save Images, to move them to the Files app and back. Then remove the extras.

If you later decide to use iCloud Photos for synchronizing your devices, then this problem will disappear, since all the pictures will be moving through the Photos system unimpaired. However, the "From My Mac" type pictures can't be transferred to iCloud. So to keep them you will need to go through the Files app back-and-forth trick.

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