Guides

Delete all photos on a jailbroken ipad without itunes

1. Requirements

3. Delete synced photos

There are 2 types of photos on iPad. The first one is synced photos: these photos are synced from your Computer via iTunes. You normally need iTunes to delete these photos. They are the targets of this article and I will show you how to delete them in this section.

There are 2 things we need to do: delete the photos themselves and delete the database files that manage these photos.

3.1 Delete photo files

Synced photos are stored at the following directory on your iPad:

/private/var/mobile/Media/Photos

You can either delete this directory completely by running this from SSH:

$ rm -r /private/var/mobile/Media/Photos

Or better to rename it just in case anything happens, you can revert it. From SSH:

$ cd /private/var/mobile/Media

$ mv Photos old_Photos

Don't worry about recreating an empty "Photos" directory. It's not needed.

3.2 Delete photo database files

Photo and album structures on iPad are managed by 2 SQLite database files:

/private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData/Photos.sqlite

/private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData/PhotosAux.sqlite

Similar to the above case, you can either delete them:

$ cd /private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData

$ rm Photos.sqlite

$ rm PhotosAux.sqlite

Or rename them:

$ cd /private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData

$ mv Photos.sqlite old_Photos.sqlite

$ mv PhotosAux.sqlite old_PhotosAux.sqlite

4. Delete camera roll photos

The second type of photos is Camera Roll photos: these are photos created from applications on your iPad. They are saved in the Camera Roll album and can be easily deleted by using the built-in functionality of the iPad. But if you want, you can also include them in this removal process. Read on to see how to do so, otherwise skip to step 6.

Camera Roll photos are stored at the following directory on your iPad:

/private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM

To delete these photos as well, do this from SSH:

$ rm -r /private/var/mobile/Media/DCIM

OR rename it:

$ cd /private/var/mobile/Media

$ mv DCIM old_DCIM

5. Start photo app

Now you can start the Photo App on your iPad. This time you should see only the Camera Roll album left on your iPad. If you did step 5 above as well, you will see no photos.

When you first start the app, it will be a bit slow and you will see a message saying "Updating Library". This is normal because it needs to recreate the DB files that you deleted above.

6. Clean backups

If you chose to rename the files and directories in above steps instead of deleting them, now you can delete those backups and use those specious spaces for your new photos!