The Difference Between a Photo and Everything the Phone Calls an Image
Okay so this is the first lesson in a new module, and it's the one I'm the most opinionated about. I said this back at the start but I'll say it again louder now: screenshots are not photos. They should not live with your photos. This is a small hill I will die on in this class.
Here's why it matters. When your phone backs everything up, or when you go to organize your camera roll, it doesn't actually know the difference between a picture of your kid's birthday and a screenshot of a receipt from Costco. To your phone, both of those are just "an image." Same folder, same bucket, same everything. But to you, they mean completely different things, and if you don't separate them early, your whole system falls apart later. You end up scrolling past 200 screenshots of a group text just to find one photo of Inez.
What actually counts as "an image" on your phone
Sooo let's just look at what's actually piling up in there. Open your camera roll right now (go ahead, I'll wait) and just scroll for ten seconds. You're going to see some combination of:
- Actual photos, the ones you took with the camera
- Screenshots, anything you captured off your own screen
- Saved images, pictures someone sent you or you downloaded off a website
- Memes
- Receipts you photographed or screenshotted for returns
- Random stuff your kid took a hundred of while playing with your phone (this is a real category, I promise)
All of that lives in the same camera roll, all mixed together, all backing up together if you've got auto-backup on. That's fine for backup purposes, honestly, more is fine there. But it's a mess for finding anything later.
The quick sort, step by step
This isn't a deep clean. This is just getting screenshots and saved images separated out so they're not swimming with your actual photos.
On iPhone:
- Open Photos
- Tap Albums at the bottom
- Scroll down to "Media Types" and you'll see a Screenshots album already sitting there, iPhone builds this automatically
- Same section usually has one for "Selfies" and sometimes a "Videos" one too, just so you know what's separated already
That Screenshots album is basically doing the sorting for you already. You don't have to build anything, it's already there, you just haven't looked at it.
On Android:
- Open Google Photos
- Tap Search at the bottom
- Scroll down to Categories and look for Screenshots
- Some phones also keep a separate Screenshots folder in your regular Gallery or Files app, outside of Google Photos entirely (this is where I get shaky, Android folks, so if your phone does something different, help each other out on this one, I mean it)
What to actually do once you can see them
Once you can see your screenshots as their own group, go through and ask yourself: do I need this forever, or did I need it for about six hours on a Tuesday?
Most screenshots are the six-hour kind. A confirmation number. A text you wanted to remember. A recipe you were going to make and didn't. Delete those. The ones that actually matter, like a screenshot of a flight confirmation you'll need again, or a photo someone sent you that you genuinely want to keep, those you can move over into an actual album with your photos, or just leave them in their own separate spot. Either is fine. The point is you know where they are and they're not drowning your real pictures.
I feel like people want this to be complicated and it just isn't. It's mostly just deleting.
A confession, because I think it helps
I want to be honest that I am not the person who finishes this kind of project in one sitting. A while back I sat down to organize my whole 2019 camera roll into monthly folders, month by month, properly. I got through about seven months. I hit August, got bored, and just stopped. It sat like that for two weeks before I even looked at it again.
I'm not proud of that, but I'm also not going to pretend it's a character flaw. That's just how my energy works on this kind of task. So if you start sorting your screenshots tonight and get through half of them and quit, that's completely normal. You don't have to finish in one sitting. You just have to start, and get the obvious junk out.
One more thing while we're here: if your kid or a grandkid has ever picked up your phone and taken 150 pictures of the ceiling fan, this is where you'll find them too. No judgment. Delete freely.
Before next time
Go find your Screenshots album, whichever version your phone has, and just look at how many are in there. Don't even delete anything yet if you don't want to, just see the number. I have a feeling it's going to surprise you the same way my 22,000 photos did.