Screenshot Storage Calculator
Work out how many GB of your camera roll is screenshots. Enter how many you have and which phone you use, and you get the total, the average size of one screenshot, and the space you would get back by deleting them.
Screenshot Storage Calculator
Your screenshots
Photos, then Collections, then Media Types, then Screenshots shows the count.
Your phone or tablet
1179 x 2556 pixels, 3.01 megapixels per screenshot.
What is in them
App screens and social feeds, with some images. The typical camera roll.
PNG is the default on both iOS and Android. It is lossless, so it wins on flat UI and loses on photos.
Optional context
Leave at 0 to skip the camera-roll share.
Decimals are fine. Leave at 0 to skip the per-year figure.
An estimate, not a byte count. Real screenshot sizes swing by 5 to 10 times depending on what is on screen. The only exact number is the one your phone reports.
Nothing to clean. Nice.
Swipe your screenshots away with Swipe44
Select All is the button nobody dares press, because ten of those screenshots matter. Swipe44 turns the album into fast triage instead: swipe right to keep, left to bin, with a running tally of the space you are about to get back. One system confirmation commits the whole batch.
Megabytes per megapixel, by format and content
| Format | Mostly text & UI | A bit of everything | Photos, maps & games |
|---|---|---|---|
| PNG (iOS and Android default) | 0.15 MB/MP | 0.55 MB/MP | 1.30 MB/MP |
| JPEG (Android JPG option) | 0.20 MB/MP | 0.35 MB/MP | 0.55 MB/MP |
| HEIC / HDR (iOS Screen Capture) | 0.12 MB/MP | 0.22 MB/MP | 0.38 MB/MP |
Multiply by your display's megapixels to get the average size of one screenshot. Yes, PNG beats JPEG on flat text and then loses badly on photographic content. Not a typo, just how the formats work.
What actually determines a screenshot's file size
Two variables, and generic file-size calculators ignore both. The first is resolution. A screenshot is captured at your display's native pixel count, so a 6.9-inch iPhone 17 Pro Max (1320 x 2868, or 3.79 megapixels) produces a file with nearly four times the pixel volume of an iPhone SE (750 x 1334, or 1.00 megapixel). Same app, same content, four times the raw data.
The second is what is on screen. An uncompressed 3 MP screen is about 9 MB of raw pixels, and PNG's job is to squeeze that down. It does that brilliantly on flat UI (10 to 20 times smaller) and badly on photographic content (2 to 3 times). Same phone, same day: a screenshot of your Notes app and a screenshot of Google Maps can differ by eight times. Which is why the calculator asks what is usually in your screenshots, rather than pretending one number fits everyone.
The 1-in-4 problem
In a study of 5,000 real phone images, about a quarter of everything in the camera roll was a screenshot. They arrive for a reason (a recipe, an address, a confirmation code) and the reason expires within about 48 hours. Almost nobody goes back to delete them. That is how you end up with thousands of them and 15 to 30 GB gone.
Screenshots are the easiest thing on the phone to say yes to deleting. Unlike your actual photos, most carry no sentimental value at all and their shelf life is measured in days. If those gigabytes are also syncing to iCloud, the iCloud Storage Cost Calculator shows what they cost you every month.
Why Select All then Delete is the wrong tool
The obvious fix (Photos, Screenshots, Select All, Trash) is exactly the move that makes people freeze, because buried in those 2,000 disposable screenshots are the ten that matter: the boarding pass, the two-factor recovery codes, the photo of where you parked. So the album sits there, untouched, for years.
What people need is fast per-item triage, not an all-or-nothing button. That is Swipe44: swipe left to bin, swipe right to keep, with a running tally of the space you are about to free on screen, and one system confirmation at the end that commits the whole batch. The on-device duplicate scan catches the same screenshot you took three times. Nothing gets uploaded, no account is needed, and it all happens on the phone.
How to read your results
The approximately sign is deliberate. These are estimates inside a very wide real-world range, and the only exact figure is the one your phone reports in Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage. Below 1,024 MB the total is shown in MB; above it, in GB, using binary units to match what iOS reports.
Share of your camera roll is measured against that 25% baseline. Well above it and you are a heavy screenshotter, so the payoff is proportionally bigger. And watch the Recently Deleted trap: deleting screenshots moves them to an album where they sit for 30 days, still taking up storage. The space is not yours again until you empty it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about screenshot storage calculator
How big is one screenshot?
On a modern iPhone, somewhere between 0.5 MB and 4 MB. The spread is that wide because two things drive it. One is your screen resolution: an iPhone 16 Pro Max screenshot has almost four times the pixels of an iPhone SE one. The other is what is actually on screen. A Messages thread is mostly flat white and compresses down to a few hundred KB. An Instagram feed, a map, or a game can hit 4 MB or more. Measurements of real PNG screenshots go as high as 10 MB at the extreme end.
Do screenshots really take up a lot of storage?
One screenshot, no. Two thousand of them, yes, because almost nobody deletes them. Take 10 a day and you are adding roughly 20 to 40 MB daily, which is over a gigabyte a month. People who have never cleaned up routinely find 7,500 or more screenshots on the phone, worth 15 to 30 GB. Very little else on your phone is that big and that easy to throw away.
What percentage of my camera roll is screenshots?
Research that analysed 5,000 phone images found roughly one in four was a screenshot: a social post, a recipe, a confirmation code, a meme. If your share sits well above 25%, you screenshot a lot, and the cleanup is worth proportionally more.
Why is my screenshot file bigger than the photo I screenshotted?
Different format. iOS captures photos in HEIC, which compresses hard and compresses well. Screenshots are captured as PNG, which is lossless and throws nothing away. So when you screenshot a photo, you are re-encoding an already-compressed image into a format that handles photographic content badly. The result really can be bigger than the original.
Are PNG screenshots always bigger than JPEG?
No, and that catches people out. PNG is lossless and very good at flat, repetitive content like solid backgrounds and text. Screenshot a settings menu and PNG will usually beat JPEG. Screenshot anything photographic (a feed, a map, gameplay) and JPEG or HEIC will land at roughly half to a third of the PNG size. Which format wins depends on what is on screen, which is why this calculator asks.
Can I change the screenshot format on my phone?
On iOS, go to Settings, then General, then Screen Capture, then Format. "SDR (Most Compatible)" gives you the standard PNG; "HDR" captures in HEIF instead. Apple flags a trade-off: HDR captures store more image data, so switching is not a guaranteed storage win. On Android, plenty of manufacturers (Samsung included) let you switch screenshots from PNG to JPG in settings, and that does reliably shrink photo-heavy captures.
How do I delete all my screenshots at once?
On iOS: Photos, then Collections, then Media Types, then Screenshots, then Select, then Select All, then Trash. That does not free the space yet. The files sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days, so go to Albums, then Recently Deleted, and empty it to actually get the storage back. The catch with bulk deleting is that you will almost certainly bin a few you wanted, like the boarding pass or the two-factor backup codes, which is why going through them one at a time usually beats Select All.
Will deleting screenshots free up iCloud storage too?
Yes, if you use iCloud Photos. The library syncs, so a deleted screenshot leaves your iCloud allocation once Recently Deleted is empty. For a lot of people, clearing a few GB of screenshots is the difference between paying for the next iCloud tier and staying on the one they have. The iCloud Storage Cost Calculator prices what those gigabytes cost you per month.