Flic: A New Way to Clean Up Your Camera Roll in iOS 8

If you recently had to delete a lot of data from your device in order to free up enough space to upgrade to iOS 8, then you know just how much of a hassle it can be to go through your camera roll and bulk delete a large number of images.

While videos tend to take up more space than photos individually, most of us have more photos than videos, and with the burst capture option and a slew of photo editing apps making it easy to create endless libraries of duplicates and regretted selfies-pending-deletion, most iOS photo libraries are far more extensive than their video counterparts. After all, when you run out of videos and apps to delete, the best course of action is to delete your photos if you're trying to free up space for an upgrade.

The Bulk Photo Deletion Problem in iOS 8

The latest iOS update required a minimum of 5 gigabytes of available storage in order to upgrade online, which prompted many of us to unload all of the duplicate photos, unwanted selfies, and useless screenshots that consume unnecessary storage space.

Unfortunately, the option to bulk delete photos is pretty well hidden in the Moments area of the Photos app, and you have to check the photos you want to delete based only on tiny thumbnails – this could result in the accidental deletion of photos that you actually wanted.

Of course, it wasn't long before some skilled developers came along and created an app to solve the difficult bulk photo deletion problem in iOS. In this case, those skilled developers happened to be the team at Lifehack Labs, with their new app Flic.

Flic is Tinder for Your Camera Roll

Flic's interface is based largely on the dating app Tinder, which lest you quickly discard or keep prospective dates as you're sorting through a sea of potential matches. The concept is logical – when you're deciding whether to delete or keep a photo, you want a large, clear view of that image before making the decision to discard.

Thus, Flic's minimalistic interface consists of one screen that shows a large thumbnail of the first photo in your camera roll. If you like it, swipe it to the right. If you want to delete it, swipe to the left. After being swiped to the right a photo is temporarily stored in the app's trash can until you confirm that you'd like to delete it permanently.

As you delete photos a counter will show you how much storage space you're about to free up once you clear the trash can. When you're done sifting through all of your photos, simply tap on the trash can button and confirm that you'd like to purge all of the trashed images.

No Pesky Ads, Available at a Reduced Launch Price

Once a month Flic will display a push notification prompting you to go through your camera roll and delete any unwanted photos. Other than that it doesn't bother you with any unwanted pop-ups or advertisements. It is currently available for $0.99 in the App Store – but we should note that the developer says this is a launch price and that it will go up to $1.99 eventually.  

Check out our list of the top 25 apps that have been updated to interface with iOS 8.