Affiliate disclosure, up front: SmartClean is our own app and links to it earn us money. Links to every other app here earn us nothing. How this works
Cleaner Guru
Cleaner Guru still gets updates. The last one was 6 August 2026, and the app has been out since 2019. It cleans four things: duplicate photos, big videos, Gmail and contacts. The store page leaves out two things. It needs iOS 16. And it eats 161 MB before it frees a single one.
Which one you should install
It cleans more than any other app here, Gmail included. Pick it if you have room to install it.
Get Cleaner Guru Not our app. We earn nothing here.Open Settings → General → iPhone Storage. Under 300 MB left? Or an iPhone 7 or older? Then Cleaner Guru cannot install at all. It needs iOS 16 and 161 MB free. SmartClean needs iOS 13 and 51 MB.
What it actually does
Most iPhone cleaners do one job. Cleaner Guru does four in one app. That is the main reason to pick it.
- Duplicate and similar photos. It scans your photos, groups the near-copies, picks the sharpest one, and deletes the rest in one tap. This is where most of the freed space comes from.
- Video handling. Big clips are the second biggest eater of space after photos. It finds them and lets you shrink or remove them.
- Contact merging. It finds and merges double entries. Barely helps storage, but it tidies things up.
- Email cleanup. It deletes mail in bulk and unsubscribes you from lists. Rare for a storage app.
- Compression. It shrinks files instead of deleting them, so you keep the content and get the space back.
Three limits worth knowing
Old phones run out of space first. And old phones are exactly the ones this app locks out. Anything before iPhone 8 cannot install it.
You install a 161 MB app to fix a full phone. If you have a few hundred megabytes left, you may have to delete something just to make room for it.
The release notes say little more than "we fixed some bugs". Years into a product, a list of what actually changed would be reasonable.
The numbers, from the App Store
| Developer | GM UniverseApps Limited |
| First released | 6 November 2019 |
| Current version | 3.5.8 · 6 August 2026 |
| Download size | 161 MB |
| Minimum iOS | 16.0 |
| Rating | 4.52 out of 5 · 148,614 ratings |
| Price | Free download, subscription unlocks full cleanup |
| Languages | English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese |
Pulled from Apple's public App Store catalogue on 6 August 2026.
How it compares
| Cleaner Guru | Cleanup | SmartClean (ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ratings | 148,614 | 693,974 | 32 |
| Last update | 2026-08-06 | 2026-07-27 | 2026-08-05 |
| Minimum iOS | 16.0 | 15.0 | 13.0 |
| Download size | 161 MB | 166 MB | 51 MB |
| Get | Read | Get · 51 MB |
Why ours ticks fewer boxes. We left out video squeezing and email cleaning on purpose. Both need big chunks of code on the phone. That code is what pushes these apps past 150 MB. Leaving it out is how SmartClean stays at 51 MB and still runs on iOS 13. If you want all four jobs in one app, and your phone can take it, Cleaner Guru is the better buy. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
Read it straight: Cleaner Guru has 148,614 ratings against our 32, so on track record it is far ahead of us. Where ours wins is size and older iPhones. If your phone is new and has room to spare, Cleaner Guru is the stronger pick.
Links to SmartClean are our own app and earn us money. The other links do not. Both are here so you can check the comparison yourself.
Links to SmartClean are our own app and earn us money. The Cleaner Guru link does not. Both are here so you can check the comparison yourself.
Questions people ask
Is Cleaner Guru safe?
On the App Store since 2019, published by a named company with a public website, and it passes Apple's review on every update, most recently 6 August 2026. That is not an independent security audit, and we have not run one. Deletion is irreversible, so review the selection before confirming.
Is it really free?
The download is. Full cleanup needs a subscription whose price is not published in the App Store catalogue, only inside the app. Check it on the subscription screen before agreeing.
How much space will it free?
Depends entirely on how many duplicates and large videos you have, so any figure here would be invented. Its own scan shows the number before you delete anything.
Will it work on my old iPhone?
Only on iOS 16 or later, which means iPhone 8 and newer. Anything older cannot install it.
Cleaner Guru or Cleanup?
Cleanup has 693,974 ratings against 148,614, and it is bigger at 166 MB. Both do the same core job. See the table above.