How to find and delete large videos on iPhone

Updated September 2026 · iOS 16 and later

Short answer: Open Photos → Albums → scroll to Media Types → Videos. That is every video in your library, newest first. iOS does not sort this album by file size — to check one clip, select it and tap the ⓘ info button. Delete what you do not want, then empty Recently Deleted to actually reclaim the space.

What the built-in album will not do

The Videos album is a flat, chronological list. It will not tell you which clips are actually the big ones — you would have to open each video's info panel one at a time. On a library with a few hundred videos, that is the part people give up on.

No size sort. Newest-first is the only order the Photos app offers for this album.
Settings → General → iPhone Storage shows how much space the whole Photos app is using, not which individual clips are the largest.
Space is not freed on delete. Deleted videos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days and still count against your storage until that album is emptied.

Where an app helps

Photodrift shows every video as its own card — it does not group videos the way it groups duplicate or screenshot clusters, because videos are rarely redundant copies of each other; the only real question is whether you still want this one. Each card is labelled Small, Medium or Large relative to the videos actually in your library, not a fixed byte cutoff, so "Large" means large for you. You choose the review order — Largest, Newest or Smallest first — and the video plays right on the card, at up to 8x speed, so a long clip takes seconds to judge. Swipe left to delete, right to keep, or use the buttons under the card instead.

Videos are part of the paid unlock, not the free tier. Free covers exact duplicates (photos with matching metadata — re-saves, AirDrops, same-second bursts), with no limit. Pro adds the rest: near-duplicates, blurry shots, screenshot groups, and videos — which are usually where the gigabytes actually are. Pro is a one-time $9.99 unlock, no subscription. See Support for the full Free vs Pro breakdown.

Before you delete anything

Check iCloud Photos. If it is on, deleting on one device deletes everywhere. That is usually what you want, but it is worth knowing.
Recently Deleted still holds the space. For 30 days, deleted videos count against storage. Empty it if you need the space now.
Shared albums are separate. Videos in Shared Albums do not count against your storage and are not part of any of this.

More guides

Questions about how Photodrift itself behaves — iCloud, restoring a purchase, what Free vs Pro covers — are answered on the Support page.

Written by the developer of Photodrift. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell me and I will fix it.