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How to find and merge duplicate photos on iPhone

Updated

Photos on your iPhone can find duplicates for you and merge each set into one. It is a built-in feature and it is free. It needs iOS 16 or later.

It only looks inside one photo library, though. It won’t find the same picture saved on a family member’s phone, an old laptop or a backup drive. The last section explains what that means.

On an iPhone

  1. Open Photos.
  2. Tap Collections, then swipe up to Utilities. On some versions you just scroll down from the library.
  3. Tap Duplicates.
  4. Tap Merge next to a set to combine it.
  5. Tap Merge [number] Items to confirm.

If you can’t see Duplicates, either you don’t have any duplicates or Photos hasn’t finished checking. Photos does its analysis in the background, and it can take a while, particularly after a big import.

What Merge does

Merging turns each set into a single photo. Apple says Photos combines the highest image quality and the relevant details into the one photo it keeps. The remaining copies move to Recently Deleted, where they stay for 30 days before they are removed for good.

Photos matches photos that are the same or very close. It is not a tool for choosing your best shot out of a burst of different pictures.

Because the extra copies go to Recently Deleted, you can look there if a merge surprises you. Tap Collections, swipe up to Utilities, and tap Recently Deleted. You will be asked for Face ID or Touch ID.

If iCloud Photos is on, merging also removes the extra copies on your other devices that use the same Apple Account.

On a Mac

The same feature is in the Photos app on a Mac.

  1. Open Photos.
  2. In the sidebar, under Utilities, click Duplicates. If you don’t see it, hover over Utilities and click the arrow. If you use an iCloud Shared Photo Library, choose Both Libraries from the Library menu in the toolbar.
  3. Select the duplicates you want to merge. You can pick one row or several. Press Command-A to select them all.
  4. Click Merge [number] Items, then click it again in the box that appears.

Photos keeps one original from each row and moves the others to Recently Deleted, where you can recover them or delete them for good. Duplicates can take time to appear while Photos analyzes the library.

What it can’t do

The Duplicates album compares photos inside one library: the one on that iPhone or Mac, plus whatever iCloud Photos syncs into it. It can’t compare that library to anything else.

That means it won’t find:

  • the same photo on your phone and your partner’s phone
  • copies on an old laptop, a USB stick or a hard drive
  • photos you downloaded from Google Photos or another service
  • copies sitting in a separate folder on your computer

For most people that is where most of the clutter is. Merging inside the Photos app is a good first step and it is worth doing. But it won’t give you one clean library from several sources.

If you’re a Photo Organizing Co client

You don’t need to merge duplicates before the job. Please leave your library as it is. Finding the same photo across several phones, drives and accounts is the main thing I do, and I will keep the best version and the right date. If you have already merged some, that is fine.

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