Several readers have written in asking how to delete photos from their iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max when the trash can icon appears in gray and can’t be tapped in the Photos app when displaying some or all images and videos. There seem to be a few different causes for this problem, which typically arise if an iPhone has been synced to a computer—either the iPhone with the trash-can issue or a different one that was backed up and restored to that problematic device.
In both cases, you may need to erase the current contents of the iOS Photos library, so you should make sure you have a complete backup of all the multimedia you want to save. If you’re already syncing photos with a Mac or PC and you’re sure you’re up to date, that’s likely what’s preventing you from deleting images in iOS—I’ll get to that in a moment. Each time that you sync your iPhone with your computer, the photos and videos on your iPhone update to match the albums on your computer.
If you don’t want to continue using a computer for syncing photos, turn off syncing in the Finder and your device will remove them.
You can turn off syncing for some of your photo albums or all of them at once.
