Apple Photos Duplicate Cleaner

[Tammara Freimark]

Youcan easily remove duplicate photos and videos from your library. Duplicates appear automatically in the Duplicates album in the sidebar. (Depending on the size of your library, duplicates may take some time to appear as Photos analyzes your photos.)

One original photo or video appears where the selected duplicates were located in your library. Deleted duplicates appear in the Recently Deleted album, where you can recover or permanently delete them.

Using a general duplicate cleaner, that is simply moving duplicate files directly from the Photos Library will damage it. Use only applications, that have been specifically designed to work with the Photos.app and is strictly using the program interface of Photos to collect potential duplicates in an album and not removing them directly from the library.

I am using it a lot. But even with a good duplicate Finder we have to inspect each potential duplicate manually and decide, which version to keep. We cannot simply delete them summarily. We have to compare the quality and the state of edit, the keywords, the titles, the albums they have been added to, then copy the metadata from the photo we want to remove to the photo we want to keep.

Usually we should not have any duplicates, as Photos is warning us, when we try to import a photo that is already in the library. If there are duplicates, there is probably problem with the syncing across devices that should be avoided in future. Try to find out, what is causing the duplicates, before you remove them. Do your duplicates have a different pixel size or a file format than the original version?

Over time, duplicate photos can accumulate in the Photos app and folders on your Mac. They can take up storage space and lead to clutter and disorganization. The most efficient way to get rid of them is to use a duplicate photo finder or cleaner, a type of software designed to automatically identify duplicate photos and quickly remove duplicates.

I tested about two dozens of duplicate photo finder apps for Mac. Seven of them stood out. These seven apps are talked about in this article. All of them can deal with duplicate photos, i.e. photos that are exactly identical (regardless of name). Some of them can also handle similar photos (aka near-duplicate photos), like photos that look the same but have different formats or resolutions or photos that look alike.

Some apps can look for duplicate photos in both the Photos app and folders, and some only work with folders or the Photos app. Some are only compatible with newer macOS versions, and some support both new and old versions.

It displays the found duplicate photos and similar ones separately under two different tabs in its results window. There are three view modes, allowing you to conveniently preview photos side by side and see photo information.

In each set of duplicate photos, the app automatically selects all but one photo for deletion. You can select or deselect photos by hand too. There are also selection rules to help you select. Similar photos are not automatically selected, but selection rules are available to help. The deleted duplicates are moved to the Recently Deleted album in the Photos app or the Trash.

PhotoSweeper can be a good choice for photographers due to its support for Capture One and Adobe Lightroom Classic. It can also be a good choice for advanced users due to the many settings to play around with and customize. But some users may find this app confusing or overwhelming to use.

This duplicate photo finder for Mac supports folders, the Photos app and the two apps mentioned above. There are three sets of settings to compare photos, one to detect duplicate photos and the other two to detect similar ones. In version 4.8.5, a touch of AI slightly improves the accuracy in similar image detection. This app is indeed outstanding when it comes to finding similar photos and its customizability. But it missed a set of duplicate photos in the test.

It offers enough photo information and options when it comes to viewing duplicate photos and selecting duplicates for removal, which, if you are a photographer or know about photos, can help you deal with the found identical or similar photos in the most ideal way possible.

Like PhotoSweeper, Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro supports folders and the Photos app, has the ability to look for duplicate photos and similar ones, and displays duplicates and similar ones in together for users to view and handle.

There are two modes, one to find identical photos only and the other to find both identical and similar ones. The latter provides four settings for users to tweak. In the test, this app also missed a set of duplicate photos. It does a good job of identifying certain edited (like resized, flipped or cropped) versions of the same photo, but fails to find similar pictures taken by my phone.

Hey, Rosa Reyes! Nice name, where are you from? I am Venezuelan. :)Thank you a lot for this post! Most apps did not help me, but the free one kind of did. It is nice to find such in-depth review of these apps, because right now I have a 10,000-items Finder Folder, and I am pretty sure every two of them are duplicates. :P

Hi, Isaiah, Cisdem DuplicateFinder can find and remove duplicate files from virtually any storage devices like internal Mac hard drives, external hard drives, cameras, iPods, USB flash drives, memory cards, etc

I've tried a lot of duplicate photo finders over the years, but i never found a perfect duplicate photo finder which could satisfy all my needs, but i will keep trying. Thanks for sharing these duplicate photo cleaner for me to try.

I'm concerned that it may delete photo files that I don't want it to. As I understand it from the software description the app will find duplicates based on the image rather than the file name, which makes sense to me because the majority of my photos won't have specific names that I have given them. For example, I've just done a quick search and there are around 40 photo files called 008.JPG on my system, many are duplicates but about 15 are individual pictures that I want to keep. Obviously I don't want to be left with just one 008.JPG photo after running the app.

Once marked there is a Trash Marked button you can select if desired. That creates an album by the name of Duplicate Marked Photos containing those photos that were marked as duplicates. It will be up to you to actually delete them from the library.

That being said consider using PowerPhotos nstead. It's more powerful and can do what iPhoto Library Manage could for iPhoto, i.e. merge libraries, copy albums/photos between libraries with their metadata (keywords, titles, descriptions, faces, locations). IMO it's a much more worthwhile app.

Duplicate photos can take up a lot of space, and there is absolutely no reason to have them on your storage devices. Backing up your photos to another device will protect them. Merely having duplicates just wastes valuable storage space.

It can be difficult to find duplicates manually, especially if you have a large number of photos on your machine. A photo duplicate finder for your Mac can save you a lot of time while maximizing your free storage space.

Disk Drill Duplicate Photo Finder is a free additional tool included with Disk Drill Data Recovery Software. It quickly scans the selected folders for duplicate files and shows you the full pathname of the identified items. Results are categorized so you can concentrate on images if you wish, but this all-purpose duplicate finder will locate any duplicate files on your Mac. The duplicate finder feature of Disk Drill is included with the free trial download of the tool and can be used without upgrading to the Pro version of the application.

Cisdem Duplicate Finder finds duplicate files quickly and gives you the option to delete them permanently, send them to a folder, or move them to the Trash. It features a simple interface that requires you to drag a folder into the interface to scan its contents. The free version only lets you identify duplicate files.

Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro helps you clean up your Mac by finding duplicate photos that can be deleted. It specializes in finding photos and is not useful for finding other duplicate files that may exist on your storage device. You can specify which folders should be scanned and the tool works with external storage devices.

Review Summary: Users appreciate its effectiveness in clearing significant disk space by identifying true duplicates and close matches, albeit caution is advised for the latter to prevent accidental deletions. Some users encountered issues with the app not being intuitive and had difficulties with deleting duplicates, especially when integrated with the Photos app. While some found customer service lacking, others valued the app for the time it saved in managing large photo libraries. Overall, the app is recognized for its utility in photo management despite some operational challenges.

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