How to Use Apple’s Version of Google Magic Eraser
Clean Up is one of the coolest new Apple Intelligence features that you can try right now on iPhone 15 Pro or later with the new iOS 18.1 update . This is Apple’s artificial intelligence photo editing tool, specially designed to remove background objects or other unwanted parts of an image with just one tap. Think of it as the iOS version of Google Magic Eraser .
In typical iPhone style, it’s quite easy to use. You can simply click on objects to delete them, or circle a larger object to let Apple do its thing. Here’s how it works.
How to Remove Objects from Photos on iPhone
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or later, you can use this feature to clean up any image in your camera roll. Just make sure you download iOS 18.1 first, which you can find in Settings -> General -> Software Update .
Open the Photos app and find the image you want to clean up. Click the Edit button on the bottom toolbar (the icon with three sliders), then go to the Cleaning tab.
The first time you do this, the Photos app will download some important cleaning data, so you’ll have to wait a couple of seconds. Now Apple will automatically scan the image and begin highlighting objects that can be removed with one tap. They will pulsate with a pink gradient. To remove one of these items, all you have to do is click on it and it will instantly disappear. In my experience, Apple Intelligence does an impressive job of filling in the empty spaces left by distant objects, especially if the background is simple. In my experience, this one-tap method is the most reliable way to clean photos.
But let’s assume that Apple hasn’t automatically highlighted everything you want to get rid of. You’ll have to take matters into your own hands, and this is where things get a little more complicated. You can use your fingers to select or touch the object you want to get rid of, but I suggest a different approach.
Instead of selecting or clicking, try simply drawing a circle or any shape around the object you want to remove. There’s no need to be precise here—within a couple of seconds, Apple Intelligence will automatically recognize the object, even if it’s something as finicky as a plant with lots of leaves. Now, just like before, you can simply click on an item to delete it.
In testing, I found that this method works much better than trying to intuitively determine the boundaries of an object by touch or painstakingly drawing over the object you want to remove (this seems to leave a weird blurry effect).
And that’s all there is to it. You can use this tool to remove people from the background of your vacation photos (which I think will be the biggest use case for this tool), or you can remove any elements that distract the eye from your subject. However, there is one drawback. When you use the cleanup tools on a photo, Live Photos is disabled, turning it into a still image.