Samsung: Deleted Photos but Storage Still Full?

If you deleted photos on a Samsung phone and the storage is still full, the photos have not left the phone yet. Fastest fix: Settings › Battery and device care (Device care on some older versions) › Storage › Recycle bin, then Empty.

Samsung Gallery moves them to a trash and keeps them there for 30 days, so you can restore a mistake (Samsung help, updated 12 March 2026). During those 30 days they still take up space.

The trash has more than one name and more than one door. Depending on the One UI version, Samsung’s own pages call it Trash, Recycle bin or Bin, and since One UI 6 the My Files app shows the deleted items of Gallery, My Files and Voice Recorder in one place (Samsung help). If your photos were also synced to a cloud, that cloud has its own trash.

The steps below go from the phone to the cloud, in the order that frees space fastest. Menu names come from Samsung’s help pages, read on 15 October 2026. They can differ by model, country and One UI version, as Samsung itself notes.

For how the trash works on any phone, Samsung or not, see why deleted photos still take up space.

Check why your Samsung storage is not going down

Start with the storage screen, so you know whether deleted photos are really the problem.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Battery and device care. On some older versions it is called Device care (Samsung UK help).
3. Tap Storage. It shows how much space is free and a breakdown by file type (Samsung help).

Look for the Recycle bin header on that screen. Samsung says that if any app has items in its bin, its icon appears there, and you can tap it and then Empty (or find Empty under the three-dot menu). That is the shortest route, and it covers every app with a bin, not only Gallery.

If the images and videos categories are much bigger than you expected, the trash is only part of the story. We come back to that in the last steps.

Empty the Samsung Gallery recycle bin (Trash)

The Gallery trash is where photos go when you tap Delete in Gallery. Samsung’s help pages give these steps:

1. Open Gallery and tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines).
2. Tap Trash. On some versions the entry reads Recycle bin (Samsung help).
3. Touch and hold a photo (or tap Edit), then tap All in the top left corner to select everything.
4. Tap Delete, which reads Delete all when everything is selected.
5. Tap Delete again to confirm.

Before step 4, scroll through the trash once. This is the last moment to rescue a photo: select it and tap Restore instead. Samsung calls this deleting permanently: there is no undo after you confirm.

If your Samsung trash seems to be not emptying after 30 days, it is working as described: Samsung deletes each item 30 days after it went to the trash (Samsung help), so the bin never looks empty if you delete regularly. Empty it by hand to get the space now.

Can you turn the Gallery trash off? Not on recent phones. Samsung’s help for One UI 6 says the trash function cannot be turned off. Older versions had a switch in Gallery’s settings (SamMobile, November 2018), so if your phone runs an older One UI you may still see it. Keeping the trash on is the safer choice anyway: emptying it after a clean-up gives you the space without losing the safety net.

Empty the Samsung My Files Recycle bin

The Samsung My Files trash is the second door. Since One UI 6, Samsung says My Files holds the deleted items of My Files, Gallery and Voice Recorder, which you can view by app (Samsung help).

1. Open My Files.
2. Tap Recycle bin (Trash on some versions).
3. To empty it, tap More (three vertical dots), then Empty.
4. To pick items instead, tap Edit, select them, then Restore or Delete.

Files you delete in My Files itself, like a downloaded video or an old screen recording, wait here too. If you emptied the Gallery trash and the storage barely moved, this is the next place to look.

Samsung also lists the bin under Settings › Device care › Storage management › Recycle bin › My Files on One UI 6 (Samsung help). Whichever door you use, Samsung says items left there are deleted automatically after 30 days.

Empty the cloud trash: Google Photos and OneDrive

Photos you deleted outside Samsung Gallery, or copies kept in a cloud, wait in other trashes. Check them before you count a photo as gone.

Google Photos. If you deleted photos in the Google Photos app rather than in Samsung Gallery, they went to Google Photos’ own trash. Google’s help currently says backed-up items stay there for 30 days, and so do items that were not backed up on Android 11 and later (Google help, read 15 October 2026). To empty it: Collections › Trash › More › Empty Trash › Delete permanently. Google also notes that deleting in the Google Photos app removes the same items from your device, and from every device with backup on.

OneDrive. Samsung Gallery could sync with OneDrive until 30 September 2026, when Samsung ended the feature (Samsung notice, 29 September 2026). Photos already synced stay in OneDrive, but Gallery no longer shows them. While the sync ran, deleting a synced photo sent it to OneDrive’s recycle bin and removed it from all synced devices (Microsoft help). Microsoft says personal accounts can restore deleted files for 30 days, and work or school accounts for 93 days unless an administrator changed it (Microsoft help). Emptying it frees space in OneDrive, not on the phone. If you used the sync, open the OneDrive app, tap your profile, then Recycle bin.

Where deleted photos wait	How long	How to empty it
Samsung Gallery trash	30 days	Gallery › menu › Trash (or Recycle bin) › select all › Delete
My Files › Recycle bin (Gallery, My Files and Voice Recorder since One UI 6)	30 days	More › Empty
Google Photos trash	30 days	Collections › Trash › More › Empty Trash
OneDrive recycle bin	30 days (personal), 93 days (work or school)	OneDrive app › profile › Recycle bin

Check the storage again, then look at what is left

Go back to Settings › Battery and device care › Storage. Once the trashes are empty, the space they held should show as free.

If the storage is still full with every trash empty, the space is somewhere else. The same screen helps:

• The biggest categories. Tap images, videos or another large category to see what is in it (Samsung help, updated 3 June 2026). A single video can take as much space as many photos.
• Large files. Samsung lists big files here, which you can select and delete (Samsung UK help).
• Unused apps. Apps you have not opened in a while, which you can uninstall.

An app’s cache is another place space builds up. On a Galaxy phone: Settings › Apps, pick the app, then Storage › Clear cache (Samsung help). Clearing the cache keeps your photos and settings. Do not tap Clear data by mistake: Samsung says it removes the personal settings and data saved in the app.

Next time: sort first, empty once

The trash fills up because deleting happens in small bursts: a few photos today, a few more next week, each batch starting its own 30 days. A calmer routine is to sort a whole stretch of the gallery in one sitting, check the result, and empty the trash once at the end.

Samsung Gallery lets you select photos and delete them, which works well for a burst of shots from one moment. Across thousands of photos it gets slow, and photos you are unsure about stay mixed in with the rest.

A sorting app shows one photo at a time. In Oust, you swipe left to delete, right to keep, and down for Later. Nothing leaves the gallery while you swipe: the photos you swipe left go to Oust’s own list, Photos to delete, which you open with View Trash. You confirm there, once, when you are done. The method is in the guide to swiping through an Android gallery.

When you confirm, Oust asks Android to delete the photos. On Android 11 and later, Android shows its own confirmation and the photos go to the phone’s trash for about 30 days. On Android 10 and earlier there is no such trash, and Oust warns you that the deletion is permanent. On a Samsung phone, look for those photos in the Gallery trash and in My Files › Recycle bin, and check the Recycle bin header in Storage, then empty whichever holds them, as in the steps above.

Oust is on Android today, from Google Play. iPhone is coming soon. It does not look for blurry or similar shots and cannot sort by album or file size: it is for deciding photo by photo, quickly. If a new phone is coming, the checklist before a new phone puts this in order with the backup and the transfer.