How to Permanently Delete Photos from Android Before Selling

When you plan to sell your Android phone and permanently delete photos, restoring the factory settings alone isn't thorough enough. They may leave traces of your data. You may think that a factory reset (Settings > System > Reset) is enough, but this doesn't completely erase all your data, especially if the data is stored in a specific area or you didn't erase the SD card properly. Delete all accounts and data before a factory reset; if you have an SD card, format it separately. Use dedicated apps or tools with secure erase capabilities—they overwrite your data multiple times, making recovery extremely difficult.

When you delete photos normally, they often just get marked as "deleted" but can still be recovered with simple recovery tools. Use a data wiping app that overwrites your storage multiple times. Forgetting to wipe or remove the SD card. Photos stored there are still accessible. Remove and securely wipe or physically destroy the SD card if you’re really paranoid.

How to permanently delete photos from Android? If your photos are synced with Google Photos or other cloud services, deleting them locally won’t delete cloud copies. Log into your cloud account (Google, Dropbox, etc.) and delete photos there too.