How to Use Clean Up in Apple Photos to Remove Distractions on iOS 18

Capturing candid photographs often results in unwanted visual clutter—such as stray power lines, photo-bombing pedestrians, discarded trash, or bright lens reflections—that detracts from the main subject. In iOS 18.1 and later, Apple introduced Clean Up within the redesigned Photos app. Powered by on-device Apple Intelligence generative inpainting models running on the Apple Neural Engine, Clean Up enables iPhone users to identify and erase background distractions seamlessly while reconstructing shadows, textures, and depth information without uploading your private library to external servers.

Hardware and Software Requirements for Clean Up

Because Clean Up utilizes on-device transformer models for image segmentation and generative pixel synthesis, specific device capabilities are required:

• Supported iPhones: iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models (iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, 16 Pro Max).
• Operating System: iOS 18.1 or later with Apple Intelligence enabled in system settings.
• Initial Model Download: The first time you activate Clean Up while connected to Wi-Fi, Photos downloads the local generative asset models (approximately 1 GB to 2 GB).

Accessing the Clean Up Tool in the Photos App

To edit a photograph using Clean Up:

1. Launch the Photos app on your compatible iPhone running iOS 18.
2. Browse and select the photograph you wish to retouch.
3. Tap the Edit button (the icon displaying three horizontal sliders) at the bottom of the screen.
4. In the redesigned editing toolbar, tap the Clean Up icon (represented by an eraser).
5. Photos will briefly display a glowing iridescent boundary around the screen while the Neural Engine analyzes the scene geometry, identifying potential background distractions automatically.

Removing Objects via Smart Detection, Circling, and Brushing

Clean Up offers three intuitive gestures depending on the complexity and scale of the distraction:

• One-Tap Smart Removal: Clean Up automatically identifies prominent background items (like stray tourists or trash cans) and highlights them with a subtle iridescent glow. Tap directly on the highlighted object to make it disappear instantly.
• Circling Distractions: For objects not automatically highlighted, draw a smooth circle around the perimeter of the item with your fingertip. Clean Up detects the enclosed object’s contours, removes it, and synthesizes matching background pixels.
• Brushing Over Fine Details: When dealing with thin cables, fence wires, or small blemishes on surfaces, brush over the artifact using gentle fingertip strokes. Clean Up blends the brushed area with surrounding color and texture gradients.

Refining Edges and Reverting Changes

To ensure photographic authenticity and control over edits:

1. Pinch-to-zoom into fine details up to several hundred percent to brush across difficult edge boundaries near hair, clothing, or complex architectural lines.
2. If an inpainting result appears unnatural, tap the Undo arrow at the top of the screen to step back one edit at a time.
3. Tap Done in the top-right corner to save your changes.
4. Photos maintains full non-destructive editing: you can tap Edit > Revert at any future time to restore the original unedited photograph.

Photographs modified with Clean Up include standard C2PA and IPTC metadata flags indicating that the image contains generative AI modifications, preserving transparency across digital sharing platforms.