How To Permanently Delete Photos & Videos On Samsung Phones

When you delete photos and videos from your phone’s gallery, they are not fully deleted but are moved to a trash folder.

They will be kept there for 30 days and will then be permanently deleted.

If you want to permanently delete them immediately without waiting for 30 days, here is what you can do.

Delete Photos Permanently from Trash Folder

1. Open up the gallery app on your phone and tap on the three lines button in the bottom right.
2. Tap on ‘recycle bin’ from the menu that appears.
3. Here, you will find all of the photos and videos that you have deleted in the last 30 days. At the bottom of each image, you will see how many days it has left before it will be permanently deleted.
4. Tap on the image you want to permanently delete, and then tap on the trash icon in the bottom right corner of the image.
5. Tap ‘delete’ on the pop-up. That image will now be permanently deleted.

Permanently Delete Multiple Photos and Videos

You can also choose multiple photos and videos to permanently delete by tapping ‘edit’ at the top, selecting several photos or videos, and then tapping the trash icon in the bottom right.

Delete Everything Permanently from Recycle Bin

You can also permanently delete everything in your recycle bin at once by tapping ‘empty’ in the top right and then tapping ‘empty recycle bin’ on the pop-up.

How to Skip Recycle Bin When Deleting Photos

If you don’t want your photos and videos to be moved to the recycle bin when you delete them, but instead, you want them to be immediately deleted, you can disable the recycle bin altogether.

This is one way to get more storage, but it’s a risky thing to do, because if at some point you delete a photo or video by mistake, it will be hard to recover it.

So, please do this at your own risk.

If you’re really sure to disable your recycle bin, here’s how to do it:

Open your gallery, then tap on the three lines button in the bottom right corner, and then tap on ‘settings’ from the menu that appears.

In settings, switch the toggle off to the right of ‘recycle bin’ and then tap ‘turn off’ on the 
popup.

Please note that any photos or videos that are currently in your recycle bin will be permanently deleted when you disable them.

Now that you have disable your recycle bin, from now on, all your photos and videos will immediately be deleted permanently when you delete them.