Welcome to the age of digital abundance! As you’ve already come to realize, your iPhone is an amazing device, but with its super-hero powers comes a problem: storage can quickly be overwhelmed, and clutter can easily take over. How do you manage years’ worth of old screenshots, duplicate photos, and forgotten videos?

I’ll tell you how — with a smart cleaner app! Smart cleaner apps are so named because they use AI technologies to find hidden clutter and make suggestions about what to keep and what to delete. The right smart cleaner app is an effortless solution to your digital clutter.

Let’s take a look at what these apps can do and why every iPhone user needs one in 2025. We’ll review the top three smart cleaner apps on the market and help you pick one that will meet your needs.

Why you need a smart cleaner app in 2025

If you’ve got digital clutter, you need a smart cleaning app. If you are constantly upgrading your iPhone with more and more storage, you need a smart cleaning app. If you pay a monthly fee for cloud storage, but never look to see what’s actually taking up space, then yes, you need a smart cleaning app.

These ingenious apps aren’t just file deleters; they’re AI-powered optimization tools designed to turn tedious, time-consuming tasks into quick, effortless ones. Here’s why manual cleanup of your digital files is no longer enough and why a dedicated app makes the job so much easier.

The duplicate photo problem: When you take multiple shots to get one perfect photo, you end up with a lot of images that you’ll never look at again. Your iPhone stores them all, and yes, you can clean them up manually, but will you? Smart cleaners use AI-powered visual analysis to detect similar photos and exact duplicates, and they even recommend the best one to keep.

iOS limitations: iOS has been rolling out some built-in cleanup features. You can offload unused apps, delete large files from text messages, and, finally, find and merge duplicate photos. It’s come a long way, but it still doesn’t offer advanced cleanup tools that third-party apps provide for media files.

The forgotten clutter: Low-value clutter is low-hanging fruit that can be pretty easily deleted without much thought on your part. Smart cleaner apps quickly locate:

  • Blurry photos and accidental shots
  • Old screenshots
  • Large, forgotten videos and screen recordings

Video Optimization: A few cleaners allow you to compress large videos with minimal quality loss, freeing up space without having to delete your favorite videos.

A smart cleaner app can replace hours of manual sorting with a few taps, ensuring you free up maximum space while keeping your valuable media files intact.

Key features to look for in an iPhone cleaner app

Whether you're a beginner or an advanced user, a good cleaner app should offer a mix of core functionality and advanced, AI-driven features. Here’s what we’d consider the top features of the most useful smart cleaner apps on the market.

Feature Category

Essential Feature

Benefit

Media cleanup

Duplicate/similar photo finder

Accurately identifies identical and near-identical shots using AI.

Large file finder

Groups and flags your biggest storage hogs (videos, screen recordings).

Screenshot/blurred photo manager

Isolates low-value clutter for bulk deletion.

Storage Optimization (Advanced)

Video compression

Reduces video file size, but preserves quality

Live Photo to still converter

Converts space-hogging Live Photos into standard images.

Organization & Privacy

AI Categorization

Groups photos by context (Pets, Food, Travel, etc.) for easier review.

Contact Management

Merges duplicate contacts and removes incomplete entries.

Usability & Safety

Local Processing (Offline Mode)

Ensures all cleaning is done on your device, keeping your data private.

Intuitive User Interface

Makes the cleanup process fast and easy for all user levels.

Best smart cleaner apps for iPhone (2025 ranking)

Based on speed, AI accuracy, and feature set, here is a comparison of the top smart cleaner apps for iOS for 2025.

CleanMy®Phone: leading AI-powered optimizer

Developed by MacPaw, the creators of the world-famous CleanMy®Mac, CleanMy®Phone is an all-in-one optimizer for your iPhone. It excels at AI-powered photo categorization and offers a suite of tools to quickly free up space, including video compression and Live Photo conversion. It processes data locally for maximum privacy and offers a yearly subscription for an affordable price.

Best For: Beginner to Advanced users who need a complete, safe, and sophisticated solution for AI optimization.

Cleanup: phone storage cleaner

Cleanup is a popular digital cleanup app that focuses on a swipe-based interface for quickly reviewing and deleting photos, making it a fast and almost gamified process. It makes it easy to delete unwanted images, videos, and contacts.

Best For: Users who prefer a rapid, interactive "swipe-to-delete" method for cleaning up their camera roll quickly.

Cleaner Guru: Clean up storage

This versatile tool cleans up similar and duplicate photos, merges duplicate contacts, and finds large files that you may want to delete. It includes extra utilities like widgets and a private "Secret Folder" for media.

Best For: Users who want a general-purpose cleaner that also handles contacts and offers a basic security/privacy vault.

Why CleanMy®Phone stands out

CleanMy®Phone has earned a reputation as the leading smart cleaner app for iOS by combining simplicity for beginners with the AI power advanced users love. It doesn't just find duplicate images; it helps you optimize and organize your entire library. Here are some of the key features that all users will appreciate.

The Declutter module: The Declutter module is designed to quickly group and analyze all low-value content on your device, including your largest videos, duplicate and similar shots, screenshots, and blurry images.

The Organize module: This looks at all of your other media files and organizes them into categories so you can easily scroll through them and choose what to keep and what to delete. Look through Travel, People, Pets, Architecture, Food, Transport, and Text. The Organize module is also where you’ll see the option to compress videos and turn Live photos to stills.

Health module: This keeps tabs on your storage and security features so you can quickly see if something needs your attention. You can also update your operating system and check your network speed from the health module.

Step-By-Step: How to clean up your iPhone with CleanMy®Phone

Getting started with CleanMy®Phone is fast and requires no technical knowledge. Here is the simple, four-step process to reclaim your iPhone's storage using CleanMy®Phone:

Step 1: Install CleanMy®Phone from the App Store

  1. Tap the App Store icon on your iPhone.
  2. Search for "CleanMy®Phone" or navigate using the link provided above.
  3. Tap Get and use Face ID/Touch ID/Password to install the app.

Step 2: Allow access & start smart scan

  1. Open the app and follow the initial prompts to allow access to your media files.
  2. Start with the Declutter module to find the easy-to-clean files on your device. The app's AI will begin its deep analysis of your photo library, videos, and other clutter.

Step 3: Review suggested cleanups

  1. Once the scan is complete, the app will present a summary of the storage you can reclaim, broken down by category (Duplicates, Screenshots, Large Videos, etc.).
  2. Tap on a category, such as ‘Largest Videos’ or ‘Blurred Shots’. Pro-Tip: Review your largest videos first. Deleting or compressing one large 5GB video can free up more space than deleting hundreds of photos.
  3. Once you’ve cleaned up the low-hanging fruit, head over to the Organize module and do the same thing. Media files will be grouped by category so you can easily scroll through and tap the ones you want to delete.

Step 4: Free up space in a few taps

  1. After reviewing and selecting the items you wish to remove or optimize, simply tap the Clean button.
  2. The app will move the selected files to your iPhone's "Recently Deleted" folder, where they will remain for 30 days before being permanently removed. For immediate space, navigate to your native Photos app, go to the "Recently Deleted" album, and tap "Delete All".

Step 5 (optional): Compress videos and convert Live Photos

For advanced space saving without deleting anything, use the Compression and Live Photos features found in CleanMy®Phone’s Organize module:

  1. Video Compression: Select the largest videos from the provided list. The original file is typically saved until the compressed version is confirmed. Once the compression is complete, you need to tap ‘Continue’ to confirm deletion of the originals.
  2. Convert Live Photos: Live Photos take up significantly more space than standard photos. This tool lets you batch-convert them to still images, instantly cutting their file size.

Final recommendation: Which smart cleaner app to install?

Choosing the best app depends on your needs, but for the most complete, safest, and most intelligent cleanup experience, we highly recommend:

  • CleanMy®Phone: Best all-around smart cleaner. Its superior AI-driven categorization, combined with essential space-saving tools like Video Compression, makes it the top choice for users who want the most storage reclaimed with the least amount of effort and highest privacy standards.
  • Cleanup: Phone storage cleaner: Best for speed and rapid deletion. Excellent for users who only want to swiftly scroll through and delete photos using a fast, interactive interface.
  • Cleaner Guru: Best general utility cleaner. A good option if you want contact merging and a basic private folder included with your photo and video cleanup tools.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Do cleaner apps really work on iPhone?

Yes, they work very well, especially for cleaning up the photo and video library, which is the biggest storage hog for most users.

Apple's iOS is very restrictive, so cleaner apps cannot "clear the cache" for other apps (only the app developer or iOS can). However, they can access your photos and videos and use advanced AI to identify and group duplicates, similar shots, blurred images, and large files—tasks that are tedious or impossible to do manually. The main benefit is reclaiming photo and video storage, which is highly effective.

How often should I clean my storage?

It depends on how actively you use your camera and take screenshots. A good rule of thumb is:

  • Average User: Every month.
  • Heavy User (e.g., social media influencer, frequent traveler, or someone who takes many burst shots/screen recordings): Weekly.

Run the scan whenever you see your available storage drop below 10-15 GB, or right before a major event (like a vacation) where you'll need maximum space.

Can I do the cleanup manually?

Of course! Manual cleanup is fine for those who don’t take many photos or videos. Manually cleaning involves:

  • Identifying duplicates: The Utilities folder in the Photos app now identifies duplicates so you can merge them and save space.
  • Finding Clutter: Manually searching for screenshots or scrolling through videos to find the largest ones.
  • Risking Deletion: While it’s easy to accidentally delete a good photo when scrolling quickly, you can always find photos in the Recently Deleted folder for 30 days.

Smart cleaner apps, like CleanMy®Phone, do this work in seconds, using algorithms to accurately identify similar photos and suggest the safest choices, saving you hours of effort.