Remove Crowds from Photos with Clean Up in iOS 27

· 1:48 · Photos · iPhone

Remove Crowds from Photos with Clean Up in iOS 27 – video thumbnail
Video: Remove Crowds from Photos with Clean Up in iOS 27 (1:48)

About this QuickTip

The Cleanup tool in the Photos app has had a massive upgrade in iOS 27, and it can now remove whole crowds of people from your iPhone photos, not just tiny distractions. I'll show you how I cleared a busy background from a photo of my dad at work, using High Quality mode and the new option to select multiple objects at once. You'll also see how to tidy up anything it misses with a second pass.

Transcript

The photo Cleanup tool on iOS 27 has had a major update. It can do so much more than just removing tiny things in the background. Now, in fact, this photo was full of people until I used the Cleanup tool to make it look like this. Let's dig in, and I'll show you how this works and give you some tips to make the most of this feature.

And before I do that, if you're new here, then hi, my name is Jacob. I'm your friendly Apple teacher on YouTube. Please do subscribe, because I've got hundreds more short and friendly QuickTip videos to help you make the most of your iPhone and iPad.

Okay, I've got this photo of my dad at work, and at the moment there are loads of people in the background I want to try and get rid of. I want the focal point to be him and the parrots. So, what I'm going to do is tap onto the Edit button on the photo, and then go onto Tools and choose Cleanup.

So far, exactly the same as iOS 26, but this is when things start to get interesting. At the top, we can choose the quality level of our work. I'm going to go on High Quality. It means it'll take a little bit longer, but it'll do a far better result. And then we can start circling things, just like before, with Cleanup.

If you get close to the subject of your picture, you'll notice you're now circling behind that subject. So all the people here, I'm circling behind, I'm not circling my dad. And now we can select multiple different objects at the same time before we start the Cleanup process. I'm going to go and select all of the people in the background in my picture.

And now when I've done that, I can tap onto Clean Up at the bottom. It'll take a moment or two, especially on High Quality mode, but already you can see the difference. It hasn't done a perfect job, but that means I can then circle those people again. And when I'm happy, I can press Clean Up one more time.

Now that picture is so much better. The background is pretty much empty, and it's even restored things like the wall and the glass behind my dad. That's the new photo Cleanup tool in iOS 27. And there are loads more cool little features hidden in this update. So, please do subscribe and then check out this video next.

Technical details: This QuickTip was recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro Max running iOS 27 in September 2026.