You can tap or click each image in a set to view it at full size, and if you were a glutton for punishment, you could delete one of the images in the set manually with the trash button. It may also identify images that are very nearly the same. Exact duplicates do, of course, but Photos also matches images that differ in size or other metadata.

Note that Photos explains at the bottom of the screen what counts as a duplicate. menu on the iPhone, the Aspect/Square button on the iPad, and the thumbnail toggle button next to the size slider on the Mac.You can also switch between a square grid and one that preserves the aspect ratio of the images-the control is in the button at the top right on the iPhone or iPad, or use the Filter By menu on the Mac to show all items, just photos, or just videos.Photos automatically displays the file size on each item so you can see that some are smaller than others. Regardless, once you’re in the Duplicates album, you’ll see a scrolling list of all duplicate photos and videos. Plus, it seems as though Photos identifies new duplicates slowly in the background, so the Duplicates album may not include new duplicates right away. We’re not sure why this is the case-perhaps Apple’s code isn’t identical between platforms-but it may be necessary to run through the merging process on multiple devices to catch everything. On the iPad, Duplicates appears in the sidebar under Utilities (middle), and on the Mac, it’s in the sidebar under the top-level Photos section (right).Įven if you use iCloud Photos, which syncs your photos and videos between all your devices, you may not see the same number of duplicates on each device.

To get started on the iPhone, tap Albums in the toolbar, scroll down to the Utilities section, and tap Duplicates (left).

It may not be perfect, but it’s a good start and extremely easy to use. And which of two identical images you want to keep can require that you compare file formats, sizes, and other metadata, which is fussy, tedious work.Īpple has come to the rescue with a new duplicate identification and merging capability in Photos in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13 Ventura. Although the human eye is good at noticing when things aren’t the same, it’s much harder to determine if two images are identical. Identifying duplicate photos and videos is difficult to do manually. The most common way is to use the Duplicate command, but we’ve seen duplicates appear due to accidentally repeated actions in other apps, repeated screenshots, multiple imports that include the same image (much as Photos tries to prevent this now), and buggy behavior in iCloud Photos. It’s all too easy to end up with duplicate photos and videos in your Photos library.

Macos photos find duplicates