If you’re the kind of iPhone user who likes to keep up with new apps, you’ve probably come across Clever Cleaner – the iPhone cleaner app that helps sort your photo library and free up a bit of storage. It hasn’t been around for ages, but it has already built a solid name for itself and easily stands apart from the usual cleanup tools. With its recent updates, Clever Cleaner picked up a few extra features that make it even handier. I didn’t wait long to give them a go, and after trying everything myself, I can say there’s something to share.
And if you just stumbled upon this post while following the latest Apple news and are hearing about Clever Cleaner for the first time, don’t be too quick to scroll away. This app is genuinely worth your attention.
What Is Clever Cleaner?
If you’ve never heard of Clever Cleaner: Free iPhone Cleaner, it’s time to get hip. So, what exactly is it? In short, it’s a free iPhone cleaner app that helps tidy up your photo and video library without risking anything important.
The team behind it isn’t new. CleverFiles, the developers of Disk Drill, have spent years building their name in the data recovery industry. Now they’ve stepped into the iPhone cleanup space with an AI-powered app, and from the looks of it, they’ve hit the mark once again. You can see it for yourself – a lot of positive user reviews across different platforms and an impressive 4.8 out of 5 rating with over 31K reviews on the App Store (and counting).
What makes Clever Cleaner stand out among other apps to clean up iPhone storage is its approach. It’s a completely free cleanup app for iPhone, with no intrusive ads or annoying pop-ups getting in the way. If that sounds too good to be true, the developers actually explained the logic behind it (both on their website and in Reddit discussions). Their idea was to keep it free for roughly six months to two years to let the App Store and Google algorithms notice strong user retention, and only later roll out paid features. Early users, though, will keep access for free. Considering that the app launched back in February, this might be the best time to grab it before anything changes.
New Features in the Latest Clever Cleaner Release
We’re here to talk about the new features of the app: Swipe Mode and Video Compression. However, it would feel a bit strange to jump right into them without mentioning the core tools that helped Clever Cleaner become one of the best apps to clean an iPhone in the first place.
When the app first launched, it offered four main features:
- Similars. This one detects and helps remove duplicates and similar photos. Even though iPhones already have a built-in duplicate utility, Clever Cleaner’s version works more accurately, as it recognizes similar shots and automatically highlights the best one in each group.
- Heavies. A section that finds large photos and videos over 25MB. It lets you sort them by size or date, browse through them, and delete the ones you don’t need in seconds.
- Lives. A feature that, in my opinion, is still underrated. It compresses Live Photos by trimming the unnecessary motion part and keeping just a still image. Perfect for those who accidentally shoot everything in Live mode.
- Screenshots. This mirrors the Screenshots album from the Photos app. It may look like a small thing, but it’s surprisingly handy (you can manage every type of file right inside Clever Cleaner without jumping back and forth between apps).
That’s just a quick rundown, though. I’d honestly suggest testing each feature on your own, they all have something useful to offer. Anyway, let’s finally get to the new stuff.
Video Compression
At the moment, this is the newest addition to Clever Cleaner. Unlike other features you can switch to from the bottom panel, this one hides inside the Heavies section. At the top, you’ll see two tabs – one for deleting large files and another for compression. Basically, all the videos that show up in the removal list also appear here, but instead of deleting them, you can shrink their size. It’s a great option if you need extra storage on your iPhone but aren’t ready to part with your videos completely. As they say, you can have your cake and eat it too – the clip stays, but it takes up way less space.
When you open any video, the app offers three compression levels: Optimal, Medium, and Maximum. As you move between them, you can see how the file size changes and how much space you’ll save (whether it’s a few megabytes or even several gigabytes). I really like that the app gives users a choice. You can decide how much quality you’re willing to sacrifice instead of letting the system decide for you.
Once the video is processed, Clever Cleaner lets you choose what to do with the original file – delete it or keep it. Another thoughtful touch: compressed videos get a small tag inside the interface, so you don’t accidentally compress them twice.
Overall, the feature is genuinely useful. Not every iPhone storage cleaner includes something like this, and that’s exactly what adds real value to Clever Cleaner.
Swipe Mode
Swipe Mode appeared back in the summer, and it instantly became one of my favorite features in Clever Cleaner. When you open it, the app displays all your photos, grouped by the month they were taken or added to your iPhone. It’s very straightforward: pick the month you want to start with, then scroll through your photos – swipe right to keep, left to delete. Simple as that.
Anything you swipe left on moves to the app’s own trash folder, so you can always go back and check what you removed. It’s useful if you get a little careless with swipes or just change your mind later. I also like that each month’s section shows both how many photos you have and how many you’ve already cleared, it gives a nice sense of progress.
It’s a smart option for those who prefer to go through their photos manually instead of letting the app decide everything on its own. It feels more personal and controlled. I’m used to seeing this kind of feature only in separate apps, but here it’s all built into one iPhone cleaner. The only thing I’d add is the ability to clean videos the same way, maybe that’ll come in one of the next updates.
Something to Note
I should probably mention one thing. No matter which feature you use to delete files, Clever Cleaner always asks for an extra confirmation before removing anything. After that, all deleted items move to the Recently Deleted album, which the app also reminds you about. It’s an iOS restriction rather than a developer mistake. Apple simply doesn’t allow third-party apps to erase media instantly. This adds a small delay before files are gone for good, but on the other hand, it gives you up to 30 days to recover anything deleted by accident, which matters a lot, since restoring files from an iPhone after that is nearly impossible.
Final Thoughts
Well, that’s where the list of new features in Clever Cleaner ends for now. I’m already looking forward to the next updates (if Reddit threads are right, the team is working on a duplicate contacts merger, which sounds promising). To be fair, Clever Cleaner started strong from the very beginning. Looking at other apps, they could have easily stopped after adding the Similars or Lives features, but they didn’t. The developers keep expanding the app and adding new tools, and it’s still completely free, at least for now.
So yes, those reviews saying that Clever Cleaner is the best iPhone cleaner app feel absolutely justified. I’ll definitely keep using it myself and honestly recommend giving it a try. It’s much easier to open an app like this once in a while than to deal later with a photo and video library that’s overflowing and impossible to sort through.
