AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage Review

Looking for an AI-powered iPhone cleaner? AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage has “AI” in its name, but does it actually deliver? We put it through real tests, scoring it across key areas to see if it’s the real deal or just another gimmick. If you want to skip straight to the Final Score, go ahead—but we recommend checking out the full breakdown first.

Overview

AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage is an iPhone cleaning app developed by GRIMLAX TRADE, S.L. and currently holds a 4.6-star rating from over 72.9K users on the App Store. It claims to use AI-powered algorithms to detect and remove unnecessary files, merge duplicate contacts, and free up storage with just a few taps.

With a high rating and a spot as #13 in the Utilities category on the App Store, it’s clearly one of the more popular iPhone cleaners out there.

Features and Functionality

We’ll start, as always, with the features. Here, we’re only evaluating the toolset—not how well it performs. That will come later. So, let’s take a look at what AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storageis packing:

• 🔍 AI smart cleaner – Uses AI to detect unnecessary files and optimize storage.
• 🖼️ Duplicate & similar photo cleanup – Finds and removes duplicate and similar-looking photos.
• 🎥 Duplicate video cleaner – Identifies and deletes duplicate videos.
• 📇 Contact cleanup – Merges duplicate contacts and removes incomplete entries.
• 📅 Event remover – Detects and removes past calendar events.
• 🔒 Secret storage – Securely stores photos, videos, and contacts with password protection.
• 🗜️ Photo & video compression – Reduces file size while preserving quality to save space.

On paper, it looks like a well-rounded set of tools that cover all the basics of an iPhone cleaner and more. Some of these features, like Secret Storage and Event Remover aren’t something you see in every app, which gives it a bit of an edge. Plus, unlike many cleaners that only focus on photos, AI Cleaner also detects and removes duplicate videos.

Verdict. A very good set of tools. It covers a broad range—photos, videos, calendar events, contacts—more than just the usual duplicate photo cleanup. It’s not the most feature-packed app we’ve seen, but it’s well-rounded and offers a solid mix of useful tools.

How well these features actually work is something we’ll go into later, but for now, it looks promising, we’re giving it a 5 out of 5.

Interface

Now, let’s talk about the design. AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage offers both light and dark modes, which is a big plus in our book. It’s a small but welcome feature that makes the app feel more polished and adaptable to user preferences.

The interface itself is clean, modern, and easy to navigate. Everything is where you’d expect it to be, with large icons and well-labeled sections—Smart Clean, Photo, Video, Contact, Events—make it simple to switch between different tools. The overall layout is intuitive, and it doesn’t take long to figure out how to use each feature.

The Similar Photos list is a highlight. It allows you to see all detected groups at a glance, so it’s very convenient to browse and manage. Other apps should take note of this approach because it does improve the overall usability.

However, this is where the good things end, and everything starts to fall apart. The photo preview is nearly unusable—it’s difficult to open, and when it does open, the layout is clunky. Scrolling is another issue. The app lags noticeably, reminiscent of old Android devices struggling to render smooth animations. Worse, as we have found, excessive scrolling causes the app to crash entirely.

Space in the UI also feels poorly utilized. There’s an unnecessary amount of empty space on the sides, with distracting lines that don’t seem to serve any functional purpose. These small design choices make the app feel unfinished and not well-optimized for iPhones with larger screens.

Verdict. Overall, while the interface looks nice, performance issues hold it back significantly. If the scrolling and crashing were fixed, this could have been a 4 out of 5 for UI design. But in its current state, with major usability flaws, we can’t give it more than a 2 out of 5.

Cleanup Results

OK, so it’s not the smoothest iPhone app out there, but at the end of the day, we’re here to clean up storage—that’s its whole purpose. The real question is: How well does it perform?

To find out, we tested AI Cleaner on an iPhone 15 Pro Max (256GB) with 95% storage usage. That’s a ton of data, and obviously, some of it has to be disposable. So, what did it manage to find?

• Similar Photos: 4,655 photos (20.4 GB)
• Duplicate Videos: 64 videos (11.5 GB)
• Contacts: 102 duplicates
• Events: 3,452 old calendar entries
• Total Cleanup Potential: 31.8 GB

Impressive numbers… on paper. But as we’ve learned from testing many cleaners, big numbers don’t always mean effective cleaning. The real test is how accurate these detections are. And, well… we were disappointed once more.

Similar photo grouping seems completely random, especially for non-people shots—90% of the time, it combines totally unrelated photos. Different objects, different lighting, different compositions—just thrown together as if the app barely even tried.

When it comes to people, things improve slightly, but not enough. Even then, 30% of the time, groups contain different people or inconsistent numbers of people. The app also fails to distinguish between someone facing the camera or turned away—all of them end up in the same group.

At this point, we seriously started questioning whether AI Cleaner even uses AI or if it just throws random files together. For an app that proudly puts “AI” in its name, these results are shocking.

Best Photo selection? A disaster. It fails 90% of the time, so automatic cleanup is basically unusable. There’s no way anyone should trust this app to delete files without manually checking every single one.

And it doesn’t stop there—the blur detection is equally bad. Out of 79 photos marked as “blurred,” only one was actually blurry.

Verdict. AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage fails where it matters most. It throws out big numbers to make it seem like it’s cleaning a ton of junk, but its actual detection accuracy is one of the worst we’ve seen. Yes, automatic cleanup is available, but what’s the point if it’s so unreliable that you have to double-check everything manually? You can free up some space with this app, but only if you’re willing to sift through its messy groupings.

We feel 2 out of 5 is fair—it’s not completely useless, but it’s far from a smart cleaner.

Scan Speed

AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage is also on the slower side. The scan took 44 minutes to finish on our iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB—and that was after it crashed the first time at the 36-minute mark. That’s very slow. In fact, it’s one of the slowest cleaners we’ve ever tested.

Verdict. We realize that scanning almost 256GB of data takes time, but we’ve tested cleaners that handled similar workloads much faster, it usually takes minutes, not nearly an hour. The fact that AI Cleaner crashed mid-scan and forced us to restart the process makes things even worse. So, between the unacceptable scan time, instability, and performance issues, this is yet another 2 out of 5 for AI Cleaner.

Pricing and Free Version

When it comes to pricing tiers, AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage doesn’t stray far from its competitors. You can subscribe for $9.99 per week or $39.99 per year—which isn’t cheap, but it’s also not out of the ordinary for this type of app. However, $9.99 per week is slightly higher than most of its close competitors we tested. While this pricing isn’t unheard of for cleaner apps, it’s on the steeper side—especially considering the app’s performance issues.

As to its free version, like most paid cleaners, AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage restricts users with some limitations. Many apps lock certain features behind a paywall or cap how much data you can clean, and this one follows the same pattern.

Instead of blocking entire features, it imposes a daily limit—you can only delete 10 photos or videos per day, and for everything else (contacts, events, etc.), you’re limited to just 2 items per day. While it’s better than offering no free version at all, it’s so restrictive that it barely lets you test the app properly.

In our opinion, an approach where you can unlock more actions by watching ads—like many other cleaners use—seems far more effective. Even if you had to watch an ad after each cleanup session, you’d still be able to remove significantly more clutter than with these strict daily limits.

Verdict. AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage sits on the pricier side, but its pricing structure isn’t much different from most competitors. The real issue isn’t the cost—it’s the underwhelming performance. You’re paying the same (and even more) as you would for top-tier cleaners, but you’re not getting the same value in return. The free version? The daily limit makes it impossible to properly test the app, and if you need to do any real cleaning, you’ll have to pay.

Overall, we’ll be generous and give it 3 out of 5 here. It’s not the worst deal, but it’s far from the best.

Final Score

We think it’s time to bring this one home with the final score—but first, let’s go over all the previous ratings.

AI Cleaner: Clean Up Storage has the features, but not the execution. On paper, it offers everything you’d expect from a top-tier iPhone cleaner—photo, video, and contact cleanup, event removal, compression, and even secret storage. But when it comes to real-world performance, it falls short. The detection accuracy is poor, the app lags and crashes, and the scanning process is painfully slow. While its pricing is in line with competitors, you simply don’t get the same level of reliability.

If the developers can fix performance issues and improve AI detection, this app could be a contender. But as it stands, we can’t recommend it—there are much better options out there.