Smart Cleanup
Smart Cleanup looks at the photos and videos of your phone and suggests the ones you could delete. It works on your phone: no photo is sent anywhere. It doesn't look at the photos on a cloud, on a network drive, or on a USB drive.
Open it from More → Create → Smart Cleanup.
The scan
The first time, Smart Cleanup scans your whole library, which can take a while. After that, it only checks what changed each time you open it. The gauge at the top shows the Total Cleanup Potential, the space you could free.
To scan your whole library again, tap the refresh icon at the top, then Start full scan.
The categories
| Category | What it finds | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicates | Identical copies of the same photo or video | Premium or Prime |
| Similar photos | Photos taken a few seconds apart that look alike | Premium or Prime |
| Best-shot | Series of 3 or more photos taken in a burst | Premium or Prime |
| Large videos | Videos of about 100 MB or more | Premium or Prime |
| Screenshots | Screenshots and screen recordings | All plans |
| Social media | Photos and videos saved by apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, or Telegram | All plans |
| Downloads | Photos and videos in download folders | All plans |
The categories are sorted by the space they could free. A photo can appear in more than one.
Without Premium or Prime, the four paid categories show how much space they could free, but tapping them only shows For premium users.
Review the suggestions
In Duplicates, Similar photos, and Best-shot, each card is a group of photos. Smart Cleanup suggests the one to keep, with a green ✓, and marks the others for deletion, with a red ✗.
- Keep all keeps the whole group.
- Review opens the group. Tap the top of a photo to switch it between KEEP and delete, then tap the bottom button to delete the marked photos. In ⋮, Select all keeps every photo, and Unselect all keeps only the suggested one.
- Delete moves the marked photos to the trash, without opening the group.
In the other categories, each card is one photo or video: tap Keep or Delete. Duplicates and Social media also have a Delete all button at the bottom.
Keep removes the card from the list. Photos you keep may be suggested again after a new scan.
What deleting does
Smart Cleanup shows the photos in Move to trash. Tap Confirm deletion, and Android may ask you to confirm too.
The photos go to Android's trash, even when the Recycle bin setting is off. You find them in Deleted items, from where you can restore them. The space is only freed once the trash is emptied: open Deleted items, tap ⋮, then Delete all items. See Deleting photos and the recycle bin.
The reminder
About once a day, Piktures checks your library in the background. When about 1 GB or more could be freed, it sends a Cleanup notification, at most once every 14 days. Tap it to open Smart Cleanup.
Piktures has no setting to stop this reminder. To turn it off, turn off the Cleanup reminders notifications of Piktures in Android's settings.
Without a paid plan, Smart Cleanup shows an ad at the bottom of the screen.