Let’s say Steve takes a bunch of pictures of plants at the store to show me, but later he doesn’t really want all those images clogging up his iPhone.

Let’s walk through a scenario on how the workflow happens now. To recap, iCloud Photo Library syncs all of your photos on all of your devices, from iPhone to iPad to iPod Touch to Mac. There’s no need for this function in Image Capture any longer IF you’re using iCloud Photo Library. I even found the current Apple Support Article where they still say, “You can also select individual items on your device, then press the Delete key on your keyboard” but pressing delete does nothing, and the Delete button simply isn’t there any more.Īnd then it hit me. I took a look, but I couldn’t find it either. This week Steve wanted to delete some photos from his iPhone, so he connected it to his Mac, launched Image Capture…but there was no Delete button. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this to clean up a device. Once you’ve executed that maneuver, you can select all (or just some) and hit the handy dandy delete button to remove them all from your device.

From there you can select photos to either have them imported into iPhoto or Aperture, or dump them all to your hard drive. While not well known, it allows you to plug in your device and view all of the photos and videos as large thumbnails. How many times have you run into the problem of an iPhone or iPad that was running out of space? Happens a lot, and if you’re well informed, you know about the hidden jewel of OS X – Image Capture.

Image capture on mac