Photo Cleaner v1.0
Scan your Apple Photos library for downloaded social media videos that lack proper camera metadata. Quickly identify and remove clutter from TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and more — freeing up iCloud and local disk space.
About
Photo Cleaner is a native macOS app that scans your entire Photos library for vertical 9:16 videos that appear to be social media downloads. It detects videos with missing camera metadata (make, model, GPS, creation date), groups flagged items by source app, and lets you preview and remove them to reclaim storage space. Built in SwiftUI with incremental scanning — re-scans only new videos after the initial full scan.
Features
- Scans your entire Photos library for vertical 9:16 videos that appear to be social media downloads
- Detects videos with missing camera metadata (make, model, GPS, creation date)
- Groups flagged items by source app (TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.)
- Sorts by file size or date
- Select individual items or bulk-select/deselect
- Preview videos before deletion
- Shows estimated space recovered before committing deletion
- Incremental scanning: re-scans only new videos after initial full scan
- Save to Album — copy all flagged items into a timestamped Photos album for review
Requirements
- Photos library access (read/write permissions required on first launch)
- Apple Silicon
Download
macOS may block the app — see installation guide below.
Installing PhotoCleaner on macOS (Unsigned App)
Because PhotoCleaner is not signed with an Apple developer certificate, macOS will block it by default. You can still install and run it by following these steps:
Download and double-click the .dmg file to mount it.
In the window that appears, drag PhotoCleaner.app into your Applications folder.
Open the Terminal app (you can find it via Spotlight or
in /Applications/Utilities/).
In Terminal, run the following commands to remove macOS's security quarantine flag and add adhoc code signature:
sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/PhotoCleaner.app"
sudo codesign --force --deep --sign - "/Applications/PhotoCleaner.app"