Xiaomi Gallery Recently Deleted: Find It and Empty It

If you are looking for Xiaomi Gallery recently deleted photos, they are in the Gallery app itself: Gallery › Albums, then scroll down to Recently deleted items (Xiaomi help). Until you empty that folder, the photos you deleted are still on the phone.

Xiaomi keeps them there so you can restore a mistake, and during that time they still take up space. The steps below cover Xiaomi and Redmi phones: Xiaomi’s help describes the Xiaomi Gallery app, and one of its pages is written for the REDMI 13C.

There is also a second trash. Files by Google keeps its own Trash, and Xiaomi’s help points to it when you delete files with that app (Xiaomi help). Photos that went there, or into Google Photos’ trash, wait as well. For why deleted photos keep using space on any phone, see deleted photos still taking up space.

The steps go from the phone to the cloud. Menu names come from Xiaomi’s and Google’s help pages, read on 15 October 2026. Xiaomi’s pages do not say which HyperOS or MIUI version they describe, so a label can differ slightly on your phone.

Find Recently deleted items on HyperOS and MIUI

The HyperOS recently deleted folder is not in the main photo grid. Xiaomi’s help gives these steps:

1. Open Gallery.
2. Tap Albums.
3. Scroll down the list and tap Recently deleted items.

On some models the entry is shorter: Xiaomi’s page for the REDMI 13C calls it Deleted items (Xiaomi help). The Spanish site Mundo Xiaomi also describes a route through the three-dot menu at the top right of Gallery on HyperOS (Mundo Xiaomi, 1 June 2026). If you do not see the album, try that menu.

How long do photos stay? Xiaomi’s help gives two figures: up to 30 days for items that were not backed up, up to 60 days in the cloud for items that were. Since early 2023 at the latest, Gallery no longer syncs to Xiaomi Cloud outside mainland China (see the cloud step below), so on most phones sold elsewhere, the 30 days on the phone is the figure that applies.

Empty the Xiaomi Gallery trash

Emptying Recently deleted items is what turns the deleted photos into free space. From Xiaomi’s help:

1. In Recently deleted items, look through the photos once. This is the last moment to rescue one.
2. Press and hold a photo to select it.
3. Tap Restore to put a photo back, or Delete to delete it permanently.

Xiaomi’s page describes selecting by press and hold; it does not describe a select-all button. If your version shows one after the press and hold, it is the quickest way to empty the whole folder. Either way, Delete here is permanent: there is no undo.

If you delete regularly, the folder never looks empty, because each photo starts its own countdown. That is expected. Emptying it by hand is how you get the space now.

Empty the second trash: Files by Google

The Files by Google trash is the second door, and it is easy to miss. Mundo Xiaomi calls it the “hidden trash” of Android and shows where it lives on a Xiaomi phone (Mundo Xiaomi). Files you delete with Files by Google go there and stay 30 days before they are deleted automatically (Google help, read 15 October 2026).

1. Open Files by Google.
2. At the top left, tap Menu, then Trash.
3. Select the files you want to delete.
4. At the bottom, tap Delete, then Delete again to confirm.

Google says files deleted from this trash are deleted permanently. To get something back instead, select it and tap Restore.

Xiaomi’s own File Manager app is different: Xiaomi says it has no trash bin, so what you delete there is not kept (Xiaomi help, page for the REDMI 13C). Nothing to empty there, and nothing to rescue either.

Check the cloud side: Xiaomi Cloud and Google Photos

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

Xiaomi Cloud (Mi Cloud). Outside mainland China, Gallery sync to Xiaomi Cloud stopped from 25 October 2022 and was gone everywhere by 1 February 2023, depending on the region (Xiaomi Cloud notice, 25 October 2022). The window to move photos to Google Photos or download them closed between May and July 2023, and the notice says Xiaomi would then delete the Gallery data it held. The notice lists recently deleted items among the Gallery features tied to the cloud that stopped; Xiaomi’s current help still describes the folder on the phone, as in the steps above. The notice says Xiaomi Cloud keeps syncing contacts, messages and notes. So outside mainland China there is no Xiaomi Cloud photo trash left to empty.

Google Photos. Xiaomi pointed its users to Google Photos for backup. If you deleted photos in the Google Photos app rather than in Xiaomi 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.

Where deleted photos wait	How long	How to empty it
Xiaomi Gallery, Recently deleted items	Up to 30 days if not backed up	Gallery › Albums › Recently deleted items › press and hold › Delete
Files by Google, Trash	30 days	Menu › Trash › select › Delete
Google Photos trash	30 days	Collections › Trash › More › Empty Trash
Xiaomi File Manager	Not kept: no trash bin	Nothing to empty

Check that the space is back

If your Xiaomi deleted photos still seem to be taking space, the storage screen tells you whether the trashes were the cause. Xiaomi’s help gives this route: Settings › About phone › Storage (Xiaomi help). Once the trashes are empty, the space they held should show as free.

If the storage is still full, look at the biggest categories on that screen: a single video can take as much space as many photos. The same screen offers to clean unnecessary files (Clear, or Free up then Clean up on some models, such as the REDMI 13C, according to Xiaomi’s page for that model), and the Security app has the same tool under Cleaner. Xiaomi advises backing up important photos first. It also suggests clearing the cache of third-party apps from their own settings.

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 countdown. 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.

Xiaomi Gallery lets you press and hold to 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 Xiaomi phone, look for those photos in Recently deleted items and in the Trash of Files by Google, 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. For the same steps on a Galaxy phone, see the Samsung trash guide.