CleanMy®Phone Alternative: The Swipe Part Without the Subscription

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Pixtide is a free iPhone photo cleaner that works as a CleanMy®Phone alternative for people who want the swipe part without the subscription: no ads, no in-app purchases and three swipe directions, checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25. CleanMy®Phone by MacPaw, formerly Gemini Photos, costs $7.99 a month or $36.99 a year in the US after a 3-day trial. It also finds duplicates, compresses videos and cleans contacts, which Pixtide does not.

This page is written by the Pixtide team (we make Pixtide). We name where the other app wins.

The short verdict

CleanMy®Phone is a broad, award-winning storage cleaner from a trusted Mac developer, and Pixtide is a narrow, free swipe sorter. Many people type it as CleanMyPhone, and it is the same app MacPaw shipped as Gemini Photos from 2017. Pick CleanMy®Phone if you want one app to find duplicates and similar shots, compress videos, merge contacts and tidy an inbox, and a subscription of $36.99 a year is acceptable to you. Pick it too if you clean photos on an iPad, which Pixtide does not support.

Pick Pixtide if the part you actually use is the swipe: going through months of photos and videos yourself, keeping or deleting each one, without a trial, a renewal date or an algorithm choosing for you. Pixtide has no paid tier, so there is nothing to unlock and nothing to cancel.

If duplicates are the whole problem, you may not need either app. Apple's Photos app has a free Duplicates album, covered further down this page.

How Pixtide and CleanMy®Phone compare

The table compares Pixtide with CleanMy®Phone: Cleanup Storage on 14 objective points, checked on the US App Store on 2026-09-25 unless a row says otherwise. The CleanMy®Phone listing is at apps.apple.com/us/app/cleanmy-phone-cleanup-storage/id1277110040.

Prices vary by region and can change. The figures above come from the US in-app purchase list on 2026-09-25; the UK yearly plan is £39.99, for example.

Why people look for a CleanMy®Phone alternative

The trial renewal is the most common complaint in recent CleanMy®Phone reviews. We read 581 unique US reviews on 2026-09-25, and 23 of them were about being charged after the trial, asking for refunds or struggling to cancel. One reviewer wrote that the app "charges you 37 dollars at 1 minute after midnight the day the free trial expires" (1 star, 2026-09-17). The 3-day trial renews into the yearly plan, so a missed reminder costs a year up front.

The second theme is the rename. About 13 reviews miss the older Gemini Photos app and features they say were removed, one titled simply "Bring Back Gemini" (2 stars, 2025-09-05). A third, smaller theme is the AI choosing the wrong photo to keep: "the one I have saved to multiple albums shouldn't be the one autoselected for deletion" (4 stars, 2026-08-09).

The trend shows in the numbers. The 37 reviews from the last three months average 3.59 stars (July 3.67, August 3.40, September 3.80), against 4.67 in April 2026. The app has not been updated since version 2.13.3 on 2026-06-12.

What the CleanMy®Phone free tier includes

CleanMy®Phone has a genuine free tier, but it covers a small part of the app. MacPaw's help page on free and premium features, dated 2026-08-06, lists Largest Videos and Screenshots in the Declutter section, the Other category in Organize, and the Health module, which shows a score, security checks, storage analytics and a speed test. Duplicates, similar photos, compression and the other tools sit behind the subscription.

The US App Store lists a $7.99 monthly plan and a $36.99 yearly plan, checked on 2026-09-25, alongside older Gemini Photos plans that still appear in the in-app purchase list. MacPaw's site advertises "Starting at $3.75/month". A lifetime option is mentioned in MacPaw's FAQ, but its price differs between sources, so we do not quote one. A CleanMyMac licence does not cover the iPhone app; Setapp's bundle, from $14.99 a month, does include it.

Pixtide skips the split entirely: every feature is available from the first launch, with no plan to choose and no renewal date. Our guide to which photo cleaner apps are free sets out the free limits of the other popular cleaners.

Swipe Mode arrived in December 2025

CleanMy®Phone added Swipe Mode in version 2.11.0 on 2025-12-17, eight years after Gemini Photos launched. The release note reads: "Swipe left to delete photos you no longer need, or swipe right to keep the ones that matter." That is two directions. Reviews describe it working inside categories and on duplicate and similar groups.

Swipe Mode is not mentioned in the App Store description or on macpaw.com, so several details are unknown: whether it is free or capped, whether it has an undo, whether there is a review screen before deletion, how videos play, and whether you can sort month by month. We do not claim it lacks any of these, only that the listing and MacPaw's help pages do not say. One June 2026 review reported Swipe Mode deletions that were not applied (1 star, 2026-06-27); that is a single report.

Pixtide was built around the swipe from the start and adds a third direction. Right keeps, left marks for deletion, and down sends a photo to a Decide Later queue, so a hard call does not stop the session.

The privacy label and MacPaw's FAQ

CleanMy®Phone's App Store privacy label lists Identifiers and Usage Data as "Data Used to Track You", checked on 2026-09-25. The label also lists email, user ID and device ID under Third-Party Advertising as data not linked to you, plus developer marketing, analytics, app functionality and diagnostics.

MacPaw describes the app in strong privacy terms. Its own copy says the app "works fully on-device" and "doesn't save or upload your pictures anywhere", and it lets you "mark photos as Sensitive so they're never included in cleanups". We found nothing suggesting CleanMy®Phone uploads photos, and we do not claim it does. MacPaw's FAQ, however, says the app "doesn't collect or transfer" personal data to any servers, which does not match its own label. Apple defines tracking as linking data from an app with other companies' data for advertising, and the label is the developer's formal statement.

Pixtide's label, checked on the same day, has no tracking section. It lists only data not linked to you, from anonymous usage statistics that can be switched off in Settings. Our guide to whether photo cleaner apps are safe explains how to read these labels.

Where CleanMy®Phone wins

CleanMy®Phone is the more established app by a wide margin. It holds 4.59 from 22,775 US ratings and 4.40 from 3,497 UK ratings, checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25, and it has been on the store since 2017-12-15. MacPaw, the Ukrainian developer based in Kyiv, also makes CleanMyMac, and about 40 of the reviews we read cite that trust: "Love anything MacPaw has." (4 stars, 2026-07-23). The app has won Red Dot and UX Design awards, and MacPaw's site says it has "helped 7 million iPhone users".

It also does jobs Pixtide does not attempt. It finds duplicates, similar shots and blurred photos, compresses videos, converts Live Photos to stills, merges contacts, cleans email, and keeps a Sensitive folder out of cleanups. Reviewers credit it with fast results: "I freed up so much space in about thirty seconds!" (5 stars, 2025-06-18) and "saved me 150GB" (5 stars, 2026-07-25). It runs on iPad as well as iPhone, supports iOS 17 and speaks 12 languages, including Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

How Pixtide works instead

Pixtide does one job: it puts every photo and video in front of you and lets you decide, one swipe at a time. You choose a month, a year, a category (screenshots, videos, selfies, Live Photos, panoramas, favourites or bursts), your recent shots or On This Day, then swipe right to keep, left to delete or down to decide later. There is no AI in Pixtide, so nothing is scored, grouped or pre-selected; our guide to a photo cleaner without AI explains why that matters for photos with personal value.

Swiping only marks a photo. At the end of a session a review screen shows everything marked, so you can rescue any photo before you confirm, and an Undo button under the card steps back through the whole session. Confirmed deletions go to the iPhone's Recently Deleted album for 30 days, as Apple describes in its guide to deleting and recovering photos.

Videos play inline with sound and a scrub bar. Progress is saved, so a year can be sorted over several evenings, and smart reminders send at most one notification a day.

Other CleanMy®Phone alternatives

The best free replacement for CleanMy®Phone's duplicate finder is already on your iPhone. Apple's Photos app has a Duplicates album under Utilities, which merges exact copies with no limit and no subscription, and Media Types albums for screenshots, videos and selfies. Apple's guide to deleting or hiding photos and videos shows how to select many items at once.

Clever Cleaner: AI CleanUp App by CleverFiles is the closest like-for-like alternative. It holds 4.8 from about 83,000 US ratings and has an unlimited free Swipe mode that sorts by month, checked on 2026-09-25. Since version 3.0 on 2026-08-17 it offers a $6.99 weekly plan and a $39.99 lifetime purchase, with daily limits on its other tools for new users. Our Clever Cleaner alternative page covers it in detail.

If you are comparing subscription cleaners more widely, the Cleanup app alternative page looks at Codeway's weekly plans, and the subscription trap guide explains how trials that renew into yearly plans work.

One honest limitation

Pixtide is narrower than CleanMy®Phone by design, and some of that is a real gap. Pixtide does not detect duplicates or similar photos, so for merging copies use Apple's Duplicates album or a duplicate finder such as CleanMy®Phone. For burst photos, Pixtide shows and deletes only the representative photo, not every frame. It runs on iPhone only, with no iPad version, and needs iOS 18 or later, so an iPhone on iOS 17 that CleanMy®Phone supports cannot run it. The app is in English. It does not compress videos, convert Live Photos, merge contacts or clean email.

How we compared

We compared the two apps on the US and UK App Stores on 2026-09-25. For CleanMy®Phone we used the App Store listing, the in-app purchase list, the App Privacy label, the version history, Apple's public lookup data for ratings, and 581 unique US reviews. We added MacPaw's own pages: the product page, the help pages on free and premium features and on the trial, and the FAQ. The theme counts come from our own reading of those reviews and are rounded. When neither the listing nor MacPaw's pages mention a feature, this page says exactly that and does not treat it as missing.

Pixtide at a glance

• Free: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no premium tier.
• No ads.
• No AI: you decide every photo.
• Works entirely on your phone: no account, no photo ever uploaded.
• Swiping only marks a photo; you review everything before confirming, and deleted photos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days.
• Photos and videos, sorted by month, year, category or recent shots.
• iPhone with iOS 18.0 or later.

Pixtide is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by CleanMy®Phone. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. This comparison reflects publicly available information as of September 2026; pricing and features change, so please check each app's App Store listing for the latest details.

Frequently asked questions

Is CleanMyPhone free?

Partly. CleanMy®Phone by MacPaw is free to download, and MacPaw's help page lists Largest Videos, Screenshots, the Other category and the Health module as free. Most other tools need a subscription: $7.99 a month or $36.99 a year in the US, checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25. Whether Swipe Mode is free is not documented. Pixtide is free with no in-app purchases at all.

How much does CleanMyPhone cost after the free trial?

CleanMy®Phone offers a 3-day free trial that needs a payment method and renews into the yearly plan, which costs $36.99 in the US. The monthly plan is $7.99, both checked on the App Store on 2026-09-25. MacPaw also mentions a lifetime option, but its price differs between sources, so check the paywall in the app before starting the trial.

Is CleanMyPhone the same app as Gemini Photos?

Yes. MacPaw renamed Gemini Photos to CleanMy®Phone on 2024-03-05 and kept the same App Store listing, id 1277110040, which first launched on 2017-12-15. Since then MacPaw has added contacts merging, Swipe Mode and Email Cleanup. Some long-time users asked for the old app back in 2025 reviews.

Does CleanMyPhone have a swipe mode?

Yes. CleanMy®Phone added Swipe Mode in version 2.11.0 on 2025-12-17. The release note describes two directions: swipe left to delete, swipe right to keep. Its free status and limits are not documented. Pixtide is built entirely around swiping and adds a third direction, down to decide later, with no swipe limit and no subscription, checked in September 2026.

What is the best free alternative to CleanMyPhone?

It depends on the job. For exact duplicates, Apple's Duplicates album in the Photos app is free and unlimited. For sorting a camera roll one photo at a time, Pixtide is a free swipe cleaner for iPhone with no ads, no subscription and no AI. Clever Cleaner by CleverFiles has a free Swipe mode but added paid plans in August 2026.