Pictures can take up a lot of space on an iOS device so it’s a fairly reasonable thing to want to delete them all from an iPhone to clear up some space. We’ll cover a few of the easiest ways to delete all the pictures, some directly on the iPhone itself, and the others you’ll need to connect the iPhone to the computer and delete everything with a bundled app like Image Capture or Explorer. Newer versions of iOS have improved their photo management capabilities, so if you’re on iOS 6 or later there’s a particularly easy option available to you.

Before proceeding, you’ll probably want to transfer all pictures from the iPhone to the computer beforehand, otherwise you won’t have any backups stored on the computer or the iPhone itself. If you’re going to be connecting it to a computer anyway to trash the pictures, you really should back them up first as part of that process.

Delete ALL Photos Directly from the iPhone

This is the best and quickest option available, but it is limited to iOS 6 or later. This limitation is because, for whatever reason, Photos wasn’t included in the app storage Usage list prior to the newest iOS versions, despite being counted against available storage, so you can’t just easily swipe to delete all the images from a central location like you can with all Music. That has changed with the latest versions though, and here is how to use this excellent feature:

• Open Settings app and then go to “General” followed by “Usage”
• Choose “Photos & Camera” from the list, this will also show you how much space they take up
• Use a left or right swiping gesture on the album to reveal a red “Delete” button

Swipe on “Camera Roll” to delete ALL photos from the iPhone, swipe on “Photo Library” to delete just pictures that are synced with a desktop, and swipe on Photo Stream if you want to remove everything from the shared streams.

This method is by far the fastest approach since it doesn’t require any syncing, manual removal, or computer use, but as we mentioned it is not available to all iOS users as it only arrived in iOS 6 and in later versions.

Delete Photos from the iPhone Itself

The third, and perhaps most obvious option, is to delete photos from the iPhone itself. This is done directly in the Photos app, and all you need to do is select which pictures to trash in your Camera Roll or any photo album. The select deletion option is available to all iOS versions:

• Open Photos app and go to Camera Roll or the album to delete images from
• Tap the [>] Edit arrow action button in the corner to select multiple pictures
• Tap directly on every picture you want to delete, select as many as you want, multitouch works to select groups at once
• When satisfied with the selections, tap the red “Delete” button in the corner, followed by the “Delete Selected Photos” button to immediately remove them from the iPhone

Of course these iOS-based approaches work aside from the iPhone as well, and this is obviously better if you want to be removing pictures from any iOS device while you’re on the go and away from a computer.

Deleting All Photos from iPhone Using a Mac

This works in all versions of Mac OS X:

1. Connect the iPhone to the computer via USB
2. Launch Image Capture from the /Applications/ folder
3. Hit Command+A to Select All pictures within Image Capture, then with all images selected click the red (\) button to delete all photos
4. Confirm deletion when asked and be prepared to wait

Now the waiting part, which can take quite a while depending on how many pictures you have. If you have 10GB+ of pictures expect it to take at least an hour to remove them all. The lengthy deletion process seems very inefficient and it’s a bit surprising there isn’t a quicker way to delete all pictures from an iOS device in one fell swoop. Also, once you start deleting the images, there’s no cancel button. It’s safe to say there’s room for improvement with this entire process, which is identical whether you’re on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

If anyone knows a better way for Mac, let us know in the comments.

Delete All Photos from iPhone Using Windows PC

This should work in all versions of Windows:

1. Connect the iPhone to the computer via USB
2. Open ‘My Computer’ and choose “Apple iPhone”
3. Open to folders “Internal Storage” and then open “DCIM”, contained within will be a folder containing all photos and videos on the iPhone
4. From the folder containing the pictures, select all, then delete

Removing pictures from the iPhone this way through Windows is significantly faster than it is from Mac OS X, probably because Windows treats it like a file system rather than a photo manager.

Updated: 1/30/2013

Thanks to Jason for reminder of how easy it is in Windows.

Tab completion is a wonderful feature of shells that make power users lives easier, letting you automatically complete commands, paths, file names, and a variety of other things entered into the command line. It works great as is but you can make it even better by enabling a few features; ignore caps lock and casing of commands when completing, remove the necessity to double-tap the Tab key if something is ambiguous, and last but certainly not least, cycle through a menu of all possibilities rather than dumping a humungous list if there is ambiguity.

If you don’t regularly use the OS X Terminal (or a linux terminal) you probably don’t have a use for this tip.

Launch Terminal and be in the home directory to get started:

• Using emacs, nano, vi, or whatever your favorite text editor is to edit .inputrc, we’ll use nano for the walkthrough:

nano .inputrc

• Paste in the following three rules on unique lines:

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
TAB: menu-complete

• Hit Control+O to save changes to .inputrc followed by control+X to quit
• Open a new Terminal window or tab, or type “login” to open a new session with the rules in effect
• Start typing a command, path, or something else and hit the Tab key to see the improvements firsthand

This has been tested to work with bash shell and should work with any version of Mac OS X. If you enjoyed this, don’t miss our other command line tips and tricks.

Thanks to Kuthair Habboush for the great tip

OS X Mountain Lion has been a painless upgrade for most users, but there are a fair amount of people experiencing some unusual wireless connectivity problems and issues. Mainly, the wi-fi connection seems to drop at random, or the Mac simply won’t stay connected to a wireless network for long. Sometimes it automatically reconnects and sometimes it doesn’t.
Read more »

Remember the old days when someone would send you a text message with a phone number, and you’d either have to memorize it while you dialed or even worse, get a pen and write it down, just to add it to a new contact immediately after? Those days are long gone, and even better with the iPhone you can actually create a new contact directly from any phone number that is sent to you via text message.

The next time you receive a text with a phone number:

1. Tap the blue arrow button alongside that message to be brought to the new contact creation screen
2. Tap “Create New Contact” or “Add to Existing Contact” as appropriate

This works in iOS on iPad and iPod touch too but chances are you’ll get the most use out of it on the iPhone.

If you’re on the other side sending a phone number out, remember that you can directly send contacts from the iPhone through iMessage and email that contain a full address book listing for a person, including their number, name, email address, picture, and whatever other information you have stored in the vcard file.

You can now stream a Macs system audio directly over AirPlay without any third party apps or tweaks. The ability to AirPlay audio is really great, and perhaps the best part is that unlike AirPlay mirroring, the system audio stream should work on any Mac that can run a modern version of Mac OS X, anything beyond Mountain Lion will work just fine, not just 2011 model year and newer Macs like what support AirPlay video.

Read more »

Mac OS X now lets you rename a file directly from the application it’s opened within. This feature is supported in most bundled Apple applications, including TextEdit, Pages, Preview, and many others, including a fair amount of third party apps too. This is a cool renaming trick that’s easy to use, let’s discuss it further.

Read more »

The Mac Mail app received a wonderfully understated change with how it handles deleting mail in new versions of Mac OS X, from Mountain Lion, Mavericks, to Yosemite and beyond.

With the new version, deleting emails works more like Outlook; you delete an email and it then selects the next oldest email rather than jumping to the next most recent message. It’s a subtle change, but it makes a worlds difference when you are clearing out a cluttered inbox, letting you start at the top of a mail inbox and working your way down deleting as you go.

Read more »

If you need to use Java, installing the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in OS X Mountain Lion is necessary even if you had Java previously installed in OS X Lion or Snow Leopard and just performed an upgrade to 10.8. That’s because Mountain Lion uninstalls Java during the upgrade process, this is to insure the newest version of the runtime is installed on the Mac for those who need it and leaving it out for those who don’t, theoretically preventing some potential security problems with Java like the old Flashback trojan.

Installing Java in OS X Mountain Lion is easy enough and can be done two ways:

• When a Java app is opened in Safari or elsewhere you will be prompted to install Java for OS X (2012-004 currently)
• Manual command line method to force the installation

The command line installation is fast and likely preferable for many advanced users since it can be initiated at any time, here’s what to do:

• Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/ and type the following command:

java -version

• Hit return to see a message stating “No Java runtime present, requesting install” followed by a window prompting you to install Java SE in order to open “java”, click “Install” to get the latest version

Many Mac users won’t ever need to use Java and for the average person it may be best left uninstalled. Disabling java or leaving it uninstalled remains a decent security tip to protect a Mac against some of the rare trojans and viruses floating around out there.

Thanks to Josh Penn for the great tip!

Notification Center is a great addition to Mac OS X, but the alert sounds coming in with each banner notification from a million and one different Mac apps and updates can be pretty annoying fairly quickly, particularly if you have a lot going on.

Rather than muting all system audio to hush the constant chiming, you can directly silence notifications on a per-app basis in MacOS and Mac OS X. This is done through the System Preferences.
Read more »

The native and already powerful Wi-Fi Diagnostics Tool in Mac OS X got a redesign in modern versions of Mac OS X, and with it came some new features that make the utility better than ever. One of the best new additions is the built-in Wi-Fi scanner tool, which is a full-featured wifi stumbler to find and discover nearby Wi-Fi networks – even those that don’t broadcast their network names.

This is really an advanced feature that has a wide variety of potential uses beyond just locating access points, most users would be best off just using the Wi-Fi menu to find available wireless networks to join. For those that want a wireless stumbler, here’s how to find and use it.

Read more »

Want to see what the weather is going to be like for the next 6 days?

Read more »

Mac OS X has a handful of features that are dependent on a constant internet connection, and one of those is the new automatic update feature. Undeniably convenient, Mac OS X and all apps installed from the Mac App Store will automatically download and update themselves, but if you have metered internet or are using Personal Hotspot you’ll probably want to save the bandwidth and stop those updates from downloading themselves in the background.

This tutorial will show you how to change your Mac OS system software update settings to prevent automatically downloading of apps and software updates.

Read more »

Apple will launch the next iPhone on September 12, according to a rumor from the typically reliable AllThingsD. Citing sources, they say Apple has an event planned for an unspecific topic for the second week of September, and suggests the event will be for the new iPhone launch.

Pictures of what is claimed to be the next-generation iPhone have surfaced several times now, indicating components are being manufactured and leaked through various parts of the supply chain. Speaking of components, AllThingsD also posted a chart demonstrating substantial prepayment of component supplies by Apple, further suggesting an upcoming product launch:

The actual release date of the next iPhone remains unknown, but the device will likely ship with iOS 6 pre-installed, and Apple has said iOS 6 is set for a “Fall” release. Fall officially begins on September 22 of this year.

Update: Other media outlets including Bloomberg and the New York Times are now confirming the “iPhone 5” September 12 launch date, with Bloomberg reiterating an earlier rumor that Steve Jobs worked closely on the redesign before he passed away.

Update 2: The Wall Street Journal is also chiming in to confirm the September 12 date, saying the Apple event will discuss “new products” – note the plural, and then mentions the iPad mini:

The company is expected to hold an event on Sept. 12 to discuss new products, according to a person familiar with the matter. A new iPhone is expected later this year and Apple has also been working with suppliers on a new smaller cousin to the iPad.

iPad mini and a new iPhone launched on the same day? That would be something.

Autocorrect in iOS is pretty smart and usually gets things right, it also learns your habits and frequently typed words and will start autocorrecting what you type to the words you have used in the past. This can be a blessing and a curse, because if you accidentally corrected a word to a wrong one or a typo, the iPad/iPhone dictionary will want to use that new erroneous word as the correction. The solution to that problem is to reset autocorrect by clearing out the keyboard dictionary.

Resetting the auto-correct keyboard dictionary is the same on all versions of iOS and on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Here’s what you will want to do:
Read more »

The hosts file maps hostnames to IP addresses, it’s present in virtually every OS in some form or another and in Mac OS X it’s stored at /etc/hosts, which requires administrative privileges to modify and generally a jump to the command line. Editing the hosts file allows you to do a variety of things like set local test domains, block websites and IP’s, downgrade iOS, troubleshoot weird iTunes errors, and much more.

If you need to edit your hosts file but you’re not savvy with Terminal and you’d rather avoid the command line entirely, check out the free Hosts preference pane. The third party Hosts panel lets you add, edit, and remove host files easily. If an item is checked, it’s stored in the hosts file, if it’s unchecked, it’s removed rather than commented out but continues to be stored in the preference panel for future use. Simple, easy to use, low maintenance, and should be perfect for anyone who needs to modify /etc/hosts but doesn’t want to get their hands too dirty with nano or vi.

• Download Hosts Preference Panel free from GitHub

Hosts works with most new versions of Mac OS x, including OS X 10.6.8, 10.7+, and 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Ideally the Hosts preference pane would include the management and multiple hosts file juggling that GasMask provides, but perhaps that’ll come in a future version.

Update: if changes aren’t taking effect, manually flush dns cache with dscacheutil.

With OS X Lion, Exposé merged with Spaces and became Mission Control, as a result the behavior of one of many peoples favorite window management features changed; you could no longer see all windows from all apps in a single screen. Instead, app windows were grouped by application and stacked atop one another. That incredibly useful old Expose feature of seeing all windows is back in OS X Mountain Lion though, and you just have to enable it to see everything from a single screen again:

1. Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu
2. Click on “Mission Control”
3. Uncheck the box next to “Group windows by application”
4. Do a three-fingered swipe up (or hit F9) to see the traditional Expose-style window manager

With Mountain Lion, you can also continue to perform the app-specific Expose style window view by hovering over the apps Dock icon and performing a three-fingered downward swipe.

Mission Control is very powerful, check out 9 great tips for Mission Control or view our archives on the topic for more.

Pictures claiming to be an assembled next-generation black iPhone have surfaced through Japanese mobile repair shop iLabFactory (their website is currently down, but 9to5mac has posted all images).

The device shown has similar styling to an iPhone 4/4S but with an elongated chasis to accomodate the larger 4″ screen, and what looks like a dark aluminum backplate rather than glass. The photos closely match the appearance of past images discovered a few months ago, and also demonstrate the rumored smaller Dock connector and the headphone port relocated to the bottom of the device.
Read more »

Removing app icons from the Dock has been the same since the very beginning of Mac OS X: grab an icon and drag it off the Dock into a poof of dust, whereby the icon is no longer displayed in the Dock. That behavior has changed slightly with OS X Mountain Lion and carried through to OS X Mavericks, presumably to prevent accidental deletion of Dock apps. There are still two easy ways to remove Dock icons in OS X 10.8 and 10.9 though, pick either approach that works best for you.
Read more »