Less Is More: Photo Cleanup

Go through your camera roll one photo at a time. Swipe right to keep, left to toss. Nothing is deleted until you confirm it. No account, and Less Is More uploads nothing.

Less Is More shows you your photos one at a time. Swipe right to keep one, left to toss it, up to file it in an album.

Tossing a photo does not delete it. Tossed photos wait in a holding area called Purgatory until you delete them or take them back. You make every decision. Less Is More may suggest which photos in a set to keep, but it never decides for you and never deletes on its own.

THE DECK

• One photo at a time, shown whole, never cropped.
• Swipe right to keep, left to toss, up to add it to an album or to Favorites.
• Swipe down if you are not sure. The photo comes back at the end.
• Tap a photo to see it full screen and zoom in.
• Undo, up to your last 50 decisions.
• Keep and toss buttons if you would rather tap, with a left-handed layout.
• Less Is More remembers what you have already decided and where you stopped.

THE CABINET This is where you choose what to go through.

• One month at a time. Finished months get a mark.
• New photos, screenshots, selfies, or everything in random order.
• Photos or videos, largest first.
• Misfires: blurry, dark and accidental shots among your 500 newest photos, worst first.
• Paperwork: photos of receipts, labels, notes and screens, among the same 500.

SETS Less Is More groups photos that look alike and photos from the same burst into sets. Open them from the Cabinet. When you go through a month or all your photos, they also come up in the deck as you reach them. You go through a set one of two ways:

• Crown carousel, the default. Flip through the set and check the ones to keep. The rest go to Purgatory. Keep all and Toss all take one tap.
• Tournament. Two photos at a time. The one you keep meets the next. You can also keep both, toss both, or skip. Less Is More can suggest which ones to keep. Its suggestions are marked in pencil, and nothing changes until you confirm. From the Cabinet, finishing a set opens the next.

PURGATORY

• Everything you tossed, largest first, with the total size.
• Restore one photo, a selection, or all of them.
• Delete a selection or empty all of it. iOS asks you to confirm. Deleted photos then go to Recently Deleted in the Photos app, where iOS keeps them for 30 days.
• When it holds 100 photos or 1 GB, or a photo has waited there a week, a card at the top of the Cabinet says so.

SUMMARY How many photos you have kept and tossed, which months you have finished, and the estimated size of what you have deleted.

WEEKLY REMINDER Off unless you turn it on, on the first screen or in Settings. A week after you last used Less Is More, one notification asks for a few minutes with your photos. If Purgatory has filled up or a photo has waited there a week, it says how many photos are waiting instead. The reminder is scheduled on your iPhone, not sent from a server.

PRIVACY

• No account, no ads, no analytics.
• Less Is More has no code that connects to the internet. Your photos are compared and sorted on your iPhone.
• If you use iCloud Photos and a full-size original is not on your phone, Apple's Photos framework downloads it, the same as in the Photos app.

WHAT IT DOESN'T DO

• It does not delete anything until you confirm it in Purgatory.
• It does not free up space right away. Photos you delete sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days unless you empty that album in Photos.
• It has no iPad layout. It is made for iPhone.