Even though iPads are used less frequently than smartphones and are usually secondary devices, storage space can still fill up over time–especially since iPadOS and applications are costing more and more gigabytes. iPad cleaners are an excellent way to clean up your storage faster and much more easily than native functionality can.
However, there are so many iPad cleaners on the App Store, and choosing the right one can make a huge difference in user experience and mileage. To help you decide, we tested dozens of them and came up with a detailed list of the 5 best iPad cleaner apps
Table of Contents
The Top 5 iPad Cleaner Apps
In this section, we’ll cover 5 iPad cleaner apps and provide a breakdown of their features, pros, cons, and pricing information. We also wrote short summaries on each app, detailing the unique ways they help with cleanup.
Only the first featured app is completely free. The rest only offer free trials. Make sure that you cancel any free trial at least 24 hours before the cutoff if you don’t intend to subscribe.
1. Clever Cleaner: AI Cleanup App
Clever Cleaner: AI Cleanup App is our current favorite photo library cleaner for iPad (and iPhones). It’s completely free with no ads, and it has one of the best interfaces you’ll find on this list. Most importantly, it has a limited but powerful set of features that can go a very long way for users with a lot of photos and videos–which usually take up the most space on your device, aside from apps and iPadOS.
Its standout feature is similar detection, which is capable of identifying both exact duplicates and identical images—something that the native Photos app can’t do. Our second favorite feature is Live Photo management, which can automatically trim the video part, leaving a high-quality photo in its stead. This alone can save gigabytes of storage space if you take a lot of Live Photos. You can even convert multiple Live Photos at once.
If you want to review photos with more precision, Swipe Mode is a feature that “presents” photos from each month like a slideshow. You can use Tinder-like swipe gestures to decide whether you want to keep it in your library or send it to the in-app Trash folder. Finally, the video module, which helps you delete large files or compress them, completes the round-up. This gives Clever Cleaner an excellent scope of use for most people, especially for a completely free app.
Main Features:
- Similar photo cleaning: Clever Cleaner finds all similar and duplicate photos in your library and compiles them in groups, allowing you to merge them into a single “best” copy. Aside from manual cleaning, the Smart Cleanup button lets you merge all photos in your library at once.
- Swipe mode: Your photos are organized by month, and you can view each month’s photos one by one in a slideshow, while using swipe gestures to keep or delete them as they appear.
- Live photo compression: Clever Cleaner displays all your Live Photos and lets you convert them into still images one by one or all at once.
- Video cleanup: The largest videos in your library are compiled and sorted by file size, so you can prioritize deleting large, unwanted videos. You can also sort them by date and browse video clutter by context.
- Video compression: For large videos that you don’t want to delete, you can use the compression tool to shrink their file size with a varying impact on quality (you can choose the ratio yourself).
- Screenshot cleaning: This feature mirrors the Screenshots album from the Photos app, with the addition of each image’s file size at the bottom of its thumbnail, to complete the round-up of your library. It also provides a button that instantly moves all your screenshots to the trash folder.
Pros:
- Completely free with no ads and limitations (perfect for beginners who want to explore)
- Fast and lightweight
- Simple and beautiful interface that simplifies cleanup
- Detection of similars makes it easy to get rid of subject-specific clutter (e.g., multiple blurred photos of the same subject)
- Each tool displays how much relative storage space is consumed
- You can add photos and videos to a “Skip List”, so you can exclude them from the scan results and prevent accidental deletion
- The app provides a “temporary trash”, where deleted photos and videos can be restored or moved to the Recently Deleted folder in the Photos app (adding an extra layer of safety)
Cons:
- Sorting options aren’t consistent among the app’s different tools
- The app’s interface is not fully optimized for iPads
Price:
- The app is completely free for now–a Pro version will likely be released over time, but according to the website, it will stay free for early users (so go get it!)
2. CleanMy®Phone: Cleanup Storage
CleanMy®Phone: Storage Cleaner is an AI-based cleaning tool with a primary focus on tidying up your iPad’s photo library. We really like how it leveraged AI for cleanup—basically, the app automatically categorizes photos for you based on content and allows you to declutter from within those categories. For example, you can view duplicate and similar images among your travel photos.
It also compiles the clutter directly for you, allowing you to browse any blurred images, duplicates, and old screenshots (among many others) as their own categories. Aside from library cleanup, the app also provides a duplicate contact cleaner that allows you to merge 2 or more contacts (along with their data).
Overall, CleanMy®Phone: Storage Cleaner is a pretty unique general cleaner that we recommend to users whose library is filled with a rich variety of photos with different subjects. This would actually maximize the app’s AI features.
Main Features:
- One-tap cleaning: The central Clean button allows you to remove all the clutter it found in your library, including duplicates, blurred photos, screenshots, and more.
- Library cleaner: CleanMy®Phone can help with similar photos, blurred images, screenshots, screen recordings, WhatsApp attachments, and more.
- AI organizer. The app generates its own categories, like People, Pets, Travel, Food, and more, and sorts your photos automatically.
- Swipe Mode: Instead of being a separate tool, Swipe Mode is available in the options menu within the AI organizer’s categories. It presents your photos as a slideshow and allows you to use swipe gestures and buttons to keep or delete them.
- Video compressor: Your library videos are compiled (sortable by date and size), and you can compress up to 10 videos at a time.
- Live Photo conversion: Up to 200 of your Live Photos can be converted into still images at once (or you can convert them individually).
- Contact cleaner: You can merge duplicate contacts, along with their metadata.
Pros:
- Good at auto-detecting clutter
- Beautiful and iPad-optimized interface
- Leverages AI a lot more than most of its competitors
Cons:
- The interface, while aesthetically pleasing, can be confusing to navigate
- This app is one of the most expensive entries on this list
Price:
- 3-day free trial
- Monthly subscription: $9.99
- Yearly subscription: $44.99
- Lifetime subscription: $99.99
3. Cleaner Neat: Clean Up Storage
Despite its name, Cleaner Neat: Clean Up Storage is a fully-featured iPad cleaner with a strong line-up of tools that can help you tidy up your library and address book. For us, what makes this app good is that, even if it has a lot of features, each of them is relatively powerful.
For example, we really liked how the app finds similars and duplicates among different media types on an iPad, including videos, Burst Mode photos, and Live Photos (and conveniently they’re categorized separately). Its contact cleaner is also feature-complete, as you can merge, delete, back up, and manage your contacts from within the app. A surprisingly useful photo editor feature was also added, which can help you comply with size requirements for social media and e-commerce platforms.
Overall, Cleaner Neat: Clean Up Storage has a good spread of features, and we recommend it for users who need an all-around cleaner. However, considering it’s a paid app (albeit with a free trial), we hope that the minimal typos and bugs we found around the interface–which we mention in the Cons section–get cleaned up in a future update.
Main Features:
- Similar media cleaner: Similar and duplicate photos, videos, Burst Photos, and Live Photos can be deleted by photo grouping or all at once (leaving the “best” copy behind).
- Photo editor: There’s an in-app mini photo editor that lets you crop your photos for various online platforms, like Instagram and Shopify.
- Video cleaner. Library videos are grouped by year, with their file sizes displayed in their thumbnails. Unfortunately, the Sort button in this feature didn’t work (as of this writing), so we couldn’t explore further.
- Video compressor: Videos can be compressed with 3 quality-to-file-size ratio options.
- Private folder: You can add photos and videos to a private folder within the app and protect it with a password.
- Contact cleaner: Your address book can be viewed and edited within the app, and duplicate and incomplete contacts are compiled for you to merge or delete. You can also back up your contacts.
- Charging animations: The app offers a lot of charging animations with some pretty cool themes.
Pros:
- The app is optimized for iPads
- It has a clean and minimalistic interface
- The similar detection tool is accurate
Cons:
- Scanning speeds across the app’s tools are relatively slow
- The app sometimes crashes when opening a feature
- Some buttons are bugged (the “Sort” button sometimes turns into “Select All”) or are misspelled
Price:
- 3-day free trial
- Weekly subscription: $7.99
- Yearly subscription: $34.99
- Lifetime subscription: $49.99
4. Phone Cleaner for iPhone, iPad
Phone Cleaner for iPhone, iPad is a comprehensive cleanup suite loaded with features for photo library cleanup (as well as the ability to merge contacts). Its main selling point is that it provides so many tools that cover most of the pain points that power users face when cleaning up their photo library.
For example, the Smart Search feature makes it easy to create custom lists out of your media files using a variety of parameters like file size and date. This makes it possible to perform highly targeted bulk cleanup–a feat that even the native Photos app struggles with. The app also provides a video compressor (super useful), a duplicate detection tool, and a very basic contacts manager, among other features.
Overall, Phone Cleaner for iPhone, iPad is a well-designed photo library cleaner that we recommend for users who take a lot of photos and videos year-round. For the right user, the app’s monthly and lifetime prices are reasonable compared to a lot of its competitors.
Main Features:
- Filter Media: Advanced filters like file size range, creation date, media type, etc., can be used to generate custom lists that help you organize library items.
- Similar media cleaner: The app can help you delete similar and duplicate photos and videos.
- Video compressor: Your biggest videos are sorted by file size, so you can compress the largest videos first.
- Swipe mode: A feature called Swipe to Keep/Delete organizes your photos into folders for months, yesterday, and last week. In each folder, you can review individual photos as a slideshow and use left and right swipe gestures to delete or keep them.
- Contact manager: You can merge duplicate contacts (along with their data), erase incomplete contacts, or edit contacts in-app.
- Sort by Size: Your entire library is sorted by file size, which is conveniently displayed on each item’s thumbnail. You can prioritize deleting your largest files, whether they’re photos or videos.
- Safari ad blocker: You can use the app to block ads while you browse the web.
- Widgets & reminders: Customizable widgets are available for the homescreen, showing storage and battery statuses. You can also set cleanup reminders as notifications.
Pros:
- Nice interface with solid user experience
- Very rich set of cleanup features—the developers understand user pain points
- The app is lightweight considering how many features it has
- The app is well-optimized for the iPad interface
- A storage usage section is included
- Subscription options are relatively low compared to similar apps
Cons:
- Each of the app’s features run their scans separately
- The app’s settings menu contains ads for their other apps, which feels a bit cluttered
Price:
- 3-day free trial
- Monthly subscription: $2.99
- Lifetime subscription: $34.99
5. Slidebox: Photo Cleaner App
Slidebox: Photo Cleaner App is a crowd favorite photo library organizer for iPad. While it’s not strictly a cleaner app like the other entries, we think it deserves at least the 5th spot because it can help keep clutter down to a minimum.
What makes this app stand out is its clever UX design—think Tinder, but for your photo library. Using swipe features and minimal buttons, you can favorite, archive, and save photos to your albums through a comfortable photo viewer. Slidebox also upgraded its album viewer to a tabbed browser, making it much easier to organize albums compared to using the native Photos app.
Overall, Slidebox is a very well-designed album organizer. If you take enough photos to need third-party cleanup solutions, this app would be a solid addition to your kit anyway.
Main Features:
- Photo manager: Photos are sorted into in-app categories for today, this week, last year, 2 years ago, and every month since the history of your library. Then, you can view each category’s photos one by one as a slideshow and use swipe gestures and buttons to keep, delete, and favorite photos, as well as sort them into albums.
- Album organizer: Existing albums are automatically added to the app, and you can create new albums, add folders, rearrange albums, or add more existing albums you chose to exclude during setup. Albums can be renamed, deleted, hidden from your timeline, and sorted by newest or oldest first.
Pros:
- Beautiful interface
- Excellent user experience that maximizes touch control
- Great performance—the app is really fast, making the sorting feature satisfying
- Photos and videos are conveniently grouped by their original albums, date added, or as their own general media categories
- All album actions in the map are mirrored in the Photos app (and in iCloud)
- You can track your progress for sorted and deleted items
- The app is well-optimized for iPad
Cons:
- Doesn’t automatically detect clutter for you
Price:
- $4.99 per month
- $49.99 per year
How We Chose Our Featured Apps
When we created this list, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t just recommend “good cleaner apps.” We wanted to find the best apps that made the most impact on your storage space without sacrificing user experience or value.
Specifically, here are the factors we considered that allowed us to narrow down our list from dozens of iPad apps to 5 high-impact tools:
- Features. When we selected apps, we really wanted features that made cleanup easier, faster, and more impactful than manual cleanup without compromising on safety or control. For example, some apps use AI to auto-delete perceived clutter, but they provide a trash folder you can manually review.
- Value. All apps on this list had to either be free or offer a usable free trial. That way, you’ll be able to tell yourself if an app’s function is worth its cost to you. That said, we only included apps that were also worth paying for (in our opinion).
- Usability. Modern iPad cleaner apps are supposed to help cut down clutter, not add complexity. We sought apps that had interfaces that were clean and intuitive, making it easy for you to pick them up during commutes, waiting in line, or during breaks.
- Scope. The apps we selected had varying scope—some apps managed specific types of data, while others offered general cleanup features. This ensures we prepared a well-rounded list that should also help make you aware of clutter you might have missed during manual cleanup.
Still Can’t Decide?
Although each app we included in this list deserves to be there, we do have our favorites. If you want our team’s personal recommendation, give Clever Cleaner: AI Cleanup App a try (it’s #1 on the list). Clever Cleaner is completely free and has no obnoxious ads, which is almost unheard of for this type of application. And since third-party apps can’t manage app storage or system data, Clever Cleaner pretty much provides the only coverage you need if freeing up storage space is a concern.
While other apps provide contact and email cleaners, those data types usually don’t take much storage space anyway. Phone Cleaner・AI Clean Storage (#3 on the list) is our second recommendation if you need an all-around (paid) cleaner with rich features.
