How to delete ALL photos from Apple devices

Software
1

I have decided to move away from using Apple Photo App and iCloud sync, migrating to Google Photos and Synology Photos in parallel

I have turned off iCloud sync to Apple Photos but the local app still have a tons of photos (and take up unnecessary storage). I thought I could just remove the Apple photo app but found that I could not. The next best thing is to delete all photos from the app but I cannot find an easy and less laborious way to do that. There is no ‘select all’ option in the app for deletion

Any suggestion?

2

There’s a big .photolibrary file inside the Pictures folder in your home directory. Delete that and you should be set.

Edit: but actually, you should re-enable iCloud sync, and then on the Mac hit cmd+a to select all, and delete everything that way. That’ll clear them off of all your devices.

3

Wasn’t there also a 30-day cooling-off period before Apple actually removed one’s images from iCloud?

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4

Ah, there might be. I haven’t actually done this myself.

I guess I would:
a) do whatever it takes until no photos appear on iPhone/iPad and iCloud is reporting no photo storage.
b) delete the Mac .photoslibrary file if it still is large.

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5

The following includes “How do I remove all iCloud Photos content from iCloud and my devices?”

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6

thank you everyone for your help on this.

7

Anything deleted will be retained in the Photos “Deleted” folder for 30 days from the date of deletion.