Frequently asked questions
How ByteClean groups your photos, what it deletes and what it never touches, which permissions it asks for, and how to get anything back.
Yes. Scanning, grouping, swipe cleaning and the compressor are all free and funded by advertising. There is a daily cap on how many files a single free session can delete; it resets on a timer shown inside the app.
No. The scan reads your gallery through Android MediaStore, and the visual fingerprint used to group similar photos is computed on the device. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and there is no cloud copy of your library.
No. Every deletion goes through Android’s own system confirmation dialog, which lists the files before anything is removed. If you dismiss that dialog, nothing is deleted.
Duplicates are the same image stored more than once — a download saved twice, a shared copy, a backup. Similar photos are different files that look alike: burst shots, retries, a few frames of the same moment. They are counted separately so you always know which kind you are deleting.
Within each group the largest file is marked "Best result" and left unticked, so the default action keeps one copy of everything. Tap any photo to open the group full-screen, compare frame by frame, and change the selection before you delete.
It shows one photo at a time, grouped by month. Swipe left to send it to the bin, right to keep it. Nothing leaves your phone until you confirm the batch, and you can undo a swipe you did not mean.
Only if you tell it to. After a video or photo is compressed you are shown the before and after sizes and asked separately whether the original should be removed.
Photo and video access only (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES and READ_MEDIA_VIDEO). It does not request all-files access. On Android 14 and later, choosing "Select photos" instead of "Allow all" leaves parts of your gallery invisible to the scan, so a cleaner cannot report accurate totals — grant full photo access for a complete result.
Deleted media goes to your gallery’s own Recently Deleted / Trash, where Android keeps it for a limited period before removing it permanently. ByteClean keeps no copy of its own, so recover anything you regret from your gallery app, not from us.
Email ngocnam.dev@gmail.com with your device model and the app version from Settings. We usually reply within 72 hours.
Still stuck?
Email us and we usually answer within 72 hours.