Nana’s Photo Cleaner
iPhone app · Looking is free

Your phone says it’s full
and won’t say why.
She will.

Nana goes through your photos and videos and splits what she finds in two: the half that can go without you losing a single picture, and the half that is your only copy. She starts you on the safe half, tells you what each pile is worth in gigabytes, and then waits. Nothing moves until you say so.

Coming to the App Store

Version one is built and it is with Apple. The day it clears review this page says so first, and the prices below are the ones it will carry.

What it costs What she can’t do
10
tools, all on one screen
30 days
before anything is really gone
Nothing
is sent anywhere, ever
Sort mode in Nana’s Photo Cleaner, showing January 2025. A photograph of a surfboard on a beach at sunset fills the card, marked roughly 2.2 megabytes. The counter above reads 6 of 8 with three on the pile and about 6.6 megabytes waiting, and a purple button at the bottom reads Delete 3, frees about 6.6 megabytes.
One photo, one thumb, one month at a time. The pile sits and waits for you.
The Room screen in Nana’s Photo Cleaner. A large ring reads about 3.72 gigabytes waiting here, and beneath it the total is split in two: about 2.69 gigabytes that can go without losing a picture, and about 1.03 gigabytes that are your only copy. A button reads Start with the free half. Below, Similar shots holds about 81.2 megabytes across 37 photos and Long videos about 3.44 gigabytes across 5.
The whole library in one number, cut into the half that is safe and the half that is not.
The Similar shots screen, on the Similar tab of three. A set of five near-identical photographs of drinks in front of a mountain lake, the first one marked BEST in green with a sharpness bar under each, and a line reading 17 percent sharper than the next one. A banner above says looking is free and removing needs the key, and the button at the bottom reads Delete 37, frees about 81.2 megabytes.
Five tries at the same picture, the sharpest one marked, and the reason printed underneath.
How it is laid out

Three places, and you can tell them apart

Storage apps usually give you one long list and hope you keep your nerve. This one has three rooms, and each answers a different question.

Sort — the deck

Your library one photo at a time, one month at a time. Two hundred photos is about a month, and a month has an end, which is the difference between this and scrolling. Swipe left onto the going pile, right onto the staying pile. Both piles sit there. She remembers where you stopped, even if you close the app in the middle of 2019.

Room — the scan

One ring with the whole number in it, split into what can go without losing a picture and what is your only copy. Underneath sit the ten tools, each with its own count and its own weight in gigabytes, so you can pick the one worth your afternoon instead of starting at the top.

Files — the folders you show her

Point her at a folder and she draws you a map of where the space went, hunts the caches other apps left lying inside it, and keeps a box for anything you are not sure about. Whatever goes in the box stays there for seven days before she lets go of it.

Inside Room

Ten tools, and three of them lose you nothing at all

Shrinking is not deleting. A video comes back at Full HD, HD or small with every frame still in it, the picture stays on your phone, and the original waits until you say otherwise.

Similar shots

The same picture taken five times, laid out as a set with the best frame marked, a sharpness bar under each one and a sentence telling you how much sharper the keeper actually is. Disagree and tap another. “Keep this one instead” is one tap, not a hidden gesture.

Didn’t come out

Out of focus, too dark, or just a dud. She shows you what she thinks and why, and she is wrong often enough that she asks rather than acts.

Screenshots

Receipts, bus times and things you meant to read. Clear as many as you like — this one is free and stays free, with no key and no week to count down.

Live Photos

Drop the three seconds of video and keep the picture. The photograph is copied across exactly as it was, not re-encoded, so what you keep is the original file and only the moving part goes.

Heavy photos

The biggest single pictures in the library, largest first. Sometimes one bad export from years ago is worth more than a month of holiday snaps.

Shrink photos

Keep every picture, lose the weight. The date, the place, the camera and the orientation all travel across to the smaller copy, so your library still sorts and maps the way it did before.

Panoramas

A wide shot weighs what several ordinary ones weigh. There are rarely many, and they are rarely the ones you look at.

Videos

Longest first, because that is the order that matches the gigabytes. Watch one before you decide — she opens it right there rather than making you go and find it.

4K videos

The ones worth shrinking most, kept in their own pile for that reason. Four times the pixels of Full HD, and you are watching them on a phone.

Shrink videos

Keep the video, lose the gigabytes. Full HD, HD or small, with the saving for each one worked out before you choose. She makes the new file first and offers you the old one afterwards, so for thirty days the phone is holding both and you can change your mind.

The quiet bit

Nothing leaves the phone, and not because she promised

Every app in this aisle says your photos are private. Here is the reason this one cannot break that even if it wanted to.

There is no networking code in her Not a request, not a socket, not a hidden endpoint. The app was built without a single line that can open a connection, so there is no moment at which a photo could be uploaded, and no switch anyone could flip later without shipping a new version.
No borrowed code came along for the ride She uses nothing but Apple’s own frameworks. There is no advertising kit, no crash reporter, no analytics library — nothing that could send something home behind the app’s back, because there is nothing in there that was written by anyone else.
Nobody is counted No account, no sign-in, no advertising identifier, no installation number. She has no way of telling one phone from another, which also means she cannot tell you apart from anyone else.
The clever part runs on your phone Working out that five photographs are the same picture, and which of them came out best, is done by the phone itself using what iOS already has on board. No image is sent away to be looked at, and there is no server that could look.
Shrinking happens here too The re-encode runs on the phone’s own chip. Sending somebody’s holiday video to a server to save them a gigabyte would be slower, cost money and break the promise above, so it was never built.
What she remembers stays in her own drawer Your piles, your protected photos and the folders you pointed her at live in the app’s own storage on the phone. Delete the app and all of it goes with her. None of it was ever anywhere else.

Two things do talk to Apple, and both are Apple’s doing rather than hers. If your photos live in iCloud, the phone fetches your own originals from your own iCloud when she needs to show or shrink one. And buying, restoring or cancelling goes through the App Store, which is where your payment details stay. The full picture is in the privacy policy.

Before you buy anything

What she can’t do, said out loud

The shop is full of apps promising to clean your whole phone. iOS does not let any app do that, including this one. Here is exactly where the wall is.

She can’t see other apps, or the junk they leave iOS does not let one app look inside another. Anything claiming to clear the clutter out of your other apps is either guessing or talking about something else entirely.
She can’t clean System Data No app can, from the inside — that number belongs to iOS. She shows you what it is and walks you through the things you can actually do about it yourself in Settings.
Nothing here is deleted for good Every delete in this app means moved to Recently Deleted, and the phone holds it for thirty days. She cannot open that album for you either, because iOS closed that door — she walks you over to Photos and you empty it there. The space comes back when you do.
Photo sizes are her estimate The phone will not tell an app what a photo weighs, so those numbers carry a ≈ wherever they appear, in the app and on this page. Video sizes and free space are measured, not guessed.
With iCloud Photos on, deleting deletes everywhere Take a photo off this phone and it comes off every device signed into the same library. That is how iCloud works, not something an app can change, so she says it once before your first delete rather than in a footnote.
iPhone only, upright only No iPad version and no landscape layout. It needs iOS 18 or later. A tidy-up you do with one thumb does not need to rotate, and pretending otherwise would be more layouts to keep honest.
Looking is free

Two ways to pay, and one way to find out first

The scan is free and stays free: every number on every screen, and clearing your screenshots, cost nothing and need no key. You find out how much room there is to get back before you decide whether it is worth anything to you. Removing the rest is what the key is for, and both plans below unlock exactly the same app.

Monthly
$3.99

A month, after a free week. It renews on its own until you turn it off in your phone’s settings, and you need to do that at least a day before the period ends.

Nana’s pick Once
$19

Paid once and yours for good, on every iPhone you sign into with the same Apple Account. No renewal, nothing to remember, nothing to cancel.

Coming to the App Store See the other apps

Bought through the App Store, so Apple takes the payment, handles the tax and handles refunds. Prices are in US dollars; your own store shows you the price in your currency.

Fresh from the oven

Changelog

Version one is finished and with Apple, so this entry has no date yet. It gets one the day the app reaches the App Store.

1.0Not out yetNew
  • Three places to work. Room, where she scans and hands you the tools. Sort, where you go through the library a month at a time onto two piles. Files, where she looks at the folders you show her and the caches other apps left in them.
  • Ten tools in Room, each with its own count and its own weight: similar shots, the ones that didn’t come out, screenshots, Live Photos, heavy photos, panoramas, videos, 4K videos, shrink photos and shrink videos.
  • Shrinking loses no frames and the file never leaves the phone. Videos come back at Full HD, HD or small; photos keep their date, place and camera.
  • Similar shots come in sets with the best frame marked, a sharpness bar under each and a sentence saying how much sharper the keeper is.
  • Nothing goes until you say so. A swipe files a photo onto a pile; the pile is where you confirm. Deleting means moved to Recently Deleted, and the phone holds it for thirty days.
  • A box in Files that holds anything you are unsure about for seven days. A home screen widget with your free space on it. Two Siri shortcuts, neither of which can delete anything.
  • Everything happens on the phone. No account, no advertising, and nothing sent anywhere.
Almost out of the oven

She’ll find the room. You decide what goes.

Have a look for nothing, see what the number says, and then make up your mind. That order round is the whole idea.

Coming to the App Store Ask her something

Made for iPhone on iOS 18 or later, upright. She needs to see your photo library, because she cannot count duplicates she is not allowed to look at, and that is the only thing she asks you for.

Made with a wooden spoon.