So, I gave up on Apple a few years ago and have no ragerts. Apple has simply lost the thread of late and Microsoft is the real innovator these days. For the record, Windows 10 is the bomb and is far more functional than Mac OS X. Regardless of my enthusiasm, however, my wife Rima still insists on using her dumb ass iPhone 5s and it's admittedly sweet 8MP camera. She takes a lot of images, and that takes up a lot of room. She needed to archive the images she had taken and make room for a few thousand more. 

But, ahem... iOS only lets you delete images one at a time, or a bunch, but you have to select them manually. One. at. a. time. How annoying, and terrible UI/UX design. Jesus, Apple, I thought you guys were supposed to be awesome at this. 

Enough with the griping. Found out a simple-ish way to backup and delete all of your images. YMMV, since I only did this on an iPhone 5s with recent-ish software on it. You will need: 

  • A PC with Windows (since I have no idea how a Mac will respond, and frankly don't care). 
  • Your iPhone.
  • The USB cable. 

It's likely you'll also need to have the iTunes software installed so you have the mobile device drivers for your iPhone, or this probably won't work. 

  1. Fire up the PC.
  2. Fire up iTunes (maybe, maybe not). 
  3. Plug in your iPhone.
  4. Open up Windows Explorer.
  5. Go to My Computer or, if you aren't living under a rock, Computer.
  6. Open up the iPhone drive that should be there. 
  7. Open the DCIM folder in there. 

Now, at this point, you should see a few folders that have stupid names. These are the different folders you have on your iPhone in the Photos app. You can't delete these. 

  1. Now, open each dumb folder. 
  2. Select all. 
  3. Press Delete. 
  4. Watch them all go away. 
  5. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now, I suggest you copy these to your hard drive before deleting them, or you can MOVE them, which is kind of the same. If you don't, you'll lose every last one of them. In case you don't know, when deleting files from a connected drive, there is no Recycle Bin. It just goes away.

Poof. 

So, take your time, be careful. Use checklists if you have to. Mind your surroundings. Keep your guard up.